


Toy Soldier

by HopelessBanana



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: (mostly), Canon Compliant, Character Study, Coming Out, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Growing Up, M/M, Multi, Otabek Altin-centric, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Series, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-07 12:56:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8801644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopelessBanana/pseuds/HopelessBanana
Summary: Otabek and Yuri met for the first time since Yakov's summer camp at the Barcelona Grand Prix Final 2016, but it took them years to fall in love. (Pretty much abandoned.)





	1. Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> me: you haven't kept up with any of ur other multi chapter fanfics, you shouldn't start any new ones for now  
> inner me: otabek/yuri slow burn post-canon updated alongside the series til the end and then following on from it
> 
> thanks inner me
> 
> also do i look like the kind of guy who knows anything about geography? spoiler i'm not i don't know shit about kazakhstan except what wikipedia throws at me i just know a fuck load of russian history cause we studied it in school so obviously i chose the kazakh's point of view to write from...............
> 
> we'll see how it goes lol

Otabek Altin had his eyes on the prize, even back in the days where he was demoted to novice, keeping up with kids half his age. Prove them wrong. Make his country proud. Win the gold.

Too many people just saw Kazakhstan as some irrelevant blip on a map somewhere, some strange nation tucked away beneath the bowels of Russia. But Otabek Altin was determined. Russia may put him down, but he’ll show them how he can rise above.

So he decided he would work hard at this camp - put his heart and soul into his skating, because if he wasn’t good enough yet he’d make sure he damn well was by the time he left. He was older than everyone here, at the very least. None of them could work as hard as he could, surely.

Then his eyes caught the ten year old’s across the room, fierce and determined under his fringe of light blond hair. The boy turned his head away, sharp and focussed. Otabek couldn’t tear his gaze away. Yakov entered, followed by Baranovskaya, who slammed the door closed behind her with a resounding thud.

All the little Russian kids stood like recruits to attention. “Otabek Altin!” Yakov barked.

“D- _da_.” He could have winced at the glare Yakov sent him for that weak response. Instead, he tried to relax, to lift his chin up a little higher.

“Evgeny Volkov!”

“ _Da!_ ”

“Alexei Mikhailov!”

“ _Da!_ ”

“Ivan Popov!”

“ _Da!_ ”

“Yuri Plisetsky!”

“ _Da!_ ” the blond boy roared, grin almost vicious.

He ran through a few more names, then handed the clipboard across the Baranovskaya. “I hope you’re all ready to begin. I won’t be going easy on you.” He swept his eyes across the line of boys and landed on Otabek. He swallowed, throat suddenly dry. Curious, he glanced back at Yuri. What did that kid make of all this?

His eyes twinkled for a moment, caught up in the thrill, then hardened, like he’d iced over. Otabek frowned, surprised. Yuri Plisetsky had the eyes of a soldier.

* * *

Otabek doesn’t understand all this _not sleeping before a competition_ business. He doesn’t understand, when he stirs awake and pulls the curtains of his hotel room aside, looking down at the pool where, yesterday, Chris and Viktor had been prancing about two days before a competition. What if they came down with something? It’s December, and when you step outside at night the air is heavy with cold. It’s comforting in a way, to feel the bite of the breeze crack your knuckles, to feel fully tangible. But it’s not something he’d want to expose his whole body to so soon before the Grand Prix Final.

He’s worked for this, worked those chapped knuckles to the bone. Don’t they _care_? Christophe placed second at last year’s Grand Prix, the gold medal was his for the taking, and Viktor is a coach now, even if he isn’t skating, he has a responsibility to his athlete (fiancé too now, he supposes). It seems a silly thing to risk throwing those things away.

He shakes himself. Let the competition eliminate themselves, he supposes, drifting across the room to the chair tucked under the table. His jacket is draped over the back, carefully folded, and he trails his fingers along the soft fabric, the deep blue and the gold. He sighs, closing his eyes and shutting out the little light that makes its way through the gap in the curtains. His coach stirs, surprised, in the other bed. “Otabek. What are you doing up?”

“I just woke up. I might get a glass of water, though.”

“Make it quick. You want to be on top form when you’re competing,” he reminds him, turning over and pulling the covers back up on his bed.

Otabek picks up a glass from a tray on the table and trails over to the bathroom, flicking the switch on and opening the door as little as possible. Best not to disturb Coach any more than he has to. The running water isn’t too loud, thankfully, and he fills one glass, drains it, then another, then puts the glass down on the shelf above the counter. Unconsciously, his gaze is drawn down to his own reflection. His hair is untidy from sleep, eyes a little bleary, but he looks okay, he thinks. Not fantastic, not yet when he is caught in the middle of his sleep, but okay. And that's good enough for now.

Rubbing the back of his neck, he falls back into bed, still angled towards the gap in the curtains. Was this why they were up all night being so ridiculous? Could they not sleep either when the moonlight was white and bright and shining? Otabek still prefers the day, the warmth of the sun and the yellow and blue daylight, but he supposes he can understand a love for night. A glance at the clock in the corner tells him it is well past midnight. He tugs the covers over his head, squeezing his eyes shut until morning, when he's woken by Coach shaking his shoulders and the beeping of the alarm clock.

“Come on, you need to warm up.”

Groggy, he drags himself out from under the covers, squinting at the bright light streaming into the room as Coach pulls open the curtains. “Okay,” he grunts. He looks in the mirror again. His eyes aren’t as puffy as they were now he’s had some sleep, though his hair is probably worse. He pats along the counter with his right hand, inspecting his face with his left, to find his comb, then tugs the tangles out. There’s hair and makeup on hand at the event, of course, god forbid even the male skaters go out on the ice barefaced, but he does want to turn up looking at least presentable.

Luckily, the rink is, of course, only just across the road from the hotel. The winter sun is warm and perfect in the day, and Otabek thanks the figure skating gods for blessing them with Barcelona. He remembers Juniors at Sochi, before the Winter Olympics a couple of years ago, and shivers at the memory, then rolls his jacket sleeves up to his elbow. When he approaches the rink, he’s assaulted by a barrage of flashing lights and shouted questions: “Otabek! How do you feel about the competition today?” “Otabek! Otabek! What were you doing with Yuri Plisetsky on your bike yesterday?” “Otabek! Is there anything you’d like your fans to know?”

He turns to the last reporter and, with a weak smile, replies: “Thank you for your continued support,” before he and his coach finally manage to break through into the main entry hall. And by the looks of things, he the first but one to make it over. Yuri Plisetsky is draped against a column in the corner, already looking fed up, hair hanging in his face. His head snaps up at the sight of someone new, and his eyes meet Otabek’s. For a second, they have that same unforgettable expression as five years ago in that camp in Russia, hell, he’s even stood beside Yakov and Baranovskaya, who loom like towers beside him. Otabek is short, but Yuri is a couple of years younger than him, so at least he still has the height advantage. A Yuri taller than him, he reckons, would be terrifying. But after a moment, he seems to realise who it is - not JJ, who can’t help tormenting him; not Phichit, excitable and probably desperate to pull him aside for a selfie; not Christophe, whose over-enthusiastic and touchy-feely personality seems to give Yuri hives; not Viktor and Yuuri Katsuki, probably the last person he wants to see right now. No, it’s just him. Yuri grins. Otabek waves back, smiling a little.

“Coach, let’s go over,” he suggests.

Coach shrugs. “Sure, whatever.”

There are a few organisers milling about, who seem to want to clear everything before the reporters are let into the hall proper, but they don’t pay attention to him yet. He’s all free to go talk to his new friend. _That’s a nice thought._ Surprisingly, Yuri doesn’t even wait for him to make his way over by himself. He barks something at Yakov and Baranovskaya, then saunters in his direction to meet him halfway. Coach hangs back now, apparently now cognisant of the fact he isn’t just talking to him as a professional.

“Sleep well?” Otabek asks, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.

Yuri yawns, like he’s emphasising his point. “Well enough.” He looks up at him, head ducked a little, scraping the toe of his shoe against the marble floors. “You?”

“Well enough,” he replies, smirking a little. Yuri smirks back, then sighs.

“I had a run in with Viktor earlier,” he admits, glancing away to focus on some particular section of the wall. Maybe the huge, blown up poster of Yuuri in his _Eros_ costume hanging off to the side, or one of the smaller ones with event times and TV schedules. “Kinda thrown me off already.” And he groans, looking up to the ceiling.

“Forget about Viktor. You’re here to win, just as much as Yuuri is. Just as much as I am.”

Yuri raises a blond eyebrow, whistling. “Is that a challenge?”

“A little friendly competition never hurt anybody.”

“Hah!” Yuri scoffs, finally focussing on him again. “It’s the Grand Prix Final, I think we’re beyond friendly competition now.”

“There’s always Worlds,” Otabek shrugs. “I didn’t even make it here last year and I won bronze there.”

“I’m not aiming to beat the bronze medallist,” Yuri reminds him, not malicious, just… informative. He’s calm, collected, shot aimed at the bullseye. “I’m going for gold.”

“Then may the best man win.”

They pause, then snicker to themselves. Yuri tosses his head, and Otabek resists the urge to pat the hair back into place, coo over him like an older brother. “I hope Katsuki gets drunk at the banquet again on Saturday,” he announces. “And _remembers_ it this time.”

“Was he really that bad last year? You weren’t all trying to tease him or something?” Otabek asks, shifting his feet. It’s hard to imagine the shy, reclusive Yuuri, who spent all of dinner last night fumbling and trying to hide his engagement ring, stripping off and challenging someone as severe as Yuri to a _dance-off_ , of all things (then again, he is a figure skater, he supposes, and his ballet instructor was one of the girls who came to support him. Surely that would make him a good dancer by default.).

Yuri cackles, throwing his head back to laugh clearly. “He was worse. He was down to his briefs before Celestino got his clothes back on him, then he dragged Viktor into it and started clinging to him…” He trails off, setting his mouth pack into a pout. “Begging him to come to his family’s hot spring and be his coach.”

Otabek’s mouth falls open, not gaping, just a small, round little _‘o’_. “Is that why he…”

“Not at first, I don’t think,” Yuri sighs, deciding to kick the floor again. “It took that video of Yuuri skating his program to convince him, I don’t know if you saw it?”

Otabek shakes his head.

“It went kind of viral on social media.”

“I don’t really use it much,” he admits. “I have an Instagram but I don’t really understand it.”

“Oh.” Yuri sounds surprised, probably because even Yuuri and Viktor use social media and Otabek _is_ only a couple of years older than him. “Heh. You need a youth to teach you, old man?”

Otabek grins, shaking his head. “I think I’ll manage.”

“How am I supposed to he _friends_ with a dinosaur like you?”

“Well it helps to feed us, before we get too angry with the kids trampling our lawns and eat them up,” he jokes, in a confidential tone.

Yuri stares for a moment, shocked, then bursts again into laughter, a little quieter this time. “Didn't think you were the type for joking,” he wheezes.

“Not usually,” he admits. “But nothing against it either.”

“It surprised me!”

The door opens behind him, and Otabek turns instinctively to the door to see who it is. “Hello everybody!” Chris calls, prancing into the hall.

Yuri scoffs, waving a hand dismissively and starting to make his way back to Yakov. “Ugh. See you, Otabek.”

“Bye.”

Chris drapes an arm around his neck, hanging off him like a limpet. "Otabek! How're you?"

“Fine, thank you,” he replies, trying to shift the weight of his arm off his back.

Chris tugs him a little closer. “Aw, don’t be like that! You were fine at dinner last night!”

“I’m still fine.” He isn’t lying at all. Chris is just _handsy_ where Otabek is… not. “Good luck today.” He pats a hand on Chris’ arm awkwardly, standing solid as a rock.

He finally seems to take the hint, withdrawing and stepping away to actually face him. “You too, Otabek,” he chimes, though he can’t resist knocking him with his elbow before he goes to find a quiet corner to talk with his coach, waving at Yuri as he passes him. Yuri all but spits on the floor at his feet. Otabek’s eyes sparkle with mirth, but he manages not to grin, dropping his eyes to the floor and slinking back towards his coach.

“All done?” Coach asks.

Otabek nods, then stretches his arms out in front of him, feeling the flex and tense of his muscles, the stretch of his tendons. A couple more competitors filter into the hall now, one of the Chinese pairs and the Canadian ice dancers. He’s never had much of anything to say to any of them, really - the one closest to his age is the 22 year old Chinese girl, and her English is passable at best so she keeps to herself, and he can’t pronounce her name properly so he’s embarrassed to have a proper conversation with her. The ice dancers are both over 30, and though they’ve offered him a smile and a piece of advice here and there, they prefer doting over JJ like a spoilt baby brother. It’s understandable. He just doesn’t really have anything in common with anyone not skating singles. He nods when he catches the man’s eye, and he nudges his partner to get her to wave with him.

All the adults are all business really. He hates to think how Yuri must feel, being the youngest here, surrounded by older teenagers and adults. A glance back at him tells him “ _just fine_ ”. Of course. He isn’t cowed by anything. Despite himself, he notices that same look has crept back into Yuri’s eyes, a soldier standing on the front lines, rifle loaded, ready to fire. Otabek probably just looks bored. He’s never been emotive.

It makes him wonder though, how people can call him the “fairy” of Russia. He has grace, and the beauty and litheness of a young man not yet fully grown into his own, but none of that comes from glitter or fairy dust. He saw it himself when he was thirteen in Russia with him and those seven other boys, remembers watching the way he dripped with sweat after being exhausted with hard work. “A real Stakhanovite!” Yakov had jeered once or twice.

“What’s that?” Yuri had asked. Otabek remembered some mention of Stakhanovites in history, but he was no academic, and couldn’t be bothered to really try and remember. Yakov had scoffed, dismissive, and neglected to explain.

But whatever Yuri did, he went hard. He complained when the others asked to stop for breaks, sometimes carried on practising even when Yakov yelled at him for it, and when he was finally dragged off the ice, he was still stretching or running through choreography. He was insane, Otabek thought.

There was, and still is, nothing of a fairy about him at all, except for his height and his fair hair and the sparkling rhinestones on his costume. The news articles that had popped up yesterday: _“The hero of Kazakhstan rides off with the Russian fairy!”_ , they were all wrong. Otabek really isn’t a hero yet, he’s only won bronze so far (not that he isn’t proud of that), and Yuri is far too loud and brash and masculine to be daintied up the way he is. He guesses, watching the way he blows his hair from his face rather than brushing it back, and keeps rocking back and forth on his feet, like he’s desperate to go somewhere, that he feels the same way. Another thing they have in common then.

“Otabek, let’s run through your programme one more time,” Coach says, tapping his shoulder to get his attention.

“Okay,” he agrees, letting his eyes linger on Yuri a moment longer first before he turns away. He should really focus, honestly. But it does feel nice, to have finally made a proper friend in seniors, even if he’s two and a half years younger, rather than the forced, stilted conversation he tries to make with the adults. ( _You’re an adult now, too_ , he has to remind himself.) Sara and Mila from the women’s singles enter, but he’s not spoken much to them either. They smile at him, but keep their heads close together, whispering frantically to each other. They must be friends, he saw them sitting together rinkside at the Rostelecom Cup, between Michele’s dramatics. Even though Mila is his age and Russian, he’s always been too awkward around women to start a proper conversation, no matter what language it’s in. Sara is four years older and far too pretty and exotic, so he’d be hopeless talking to her too. It doesn’t stop him nodding in their direction. At the very least, he’s hardly going to be rude to them.

Then, like opened floodgates, a stream of competitors start to spill through the doors. Suddenly, he is grateful he and his coach have already found somewhere quiet and out of the way to stand. The women, a few of the junior competitors and the ice dancers coming to watch, the other five pairs, and of course the men. Phichit has a spring in his step. JJ’s fiancée is still attached to him at the hip. Yuuri is focussed, not the soldier’s determination that the Russian (and his obvious favourite) Yuri has, but a warm sort of resolve. A glance down at his hand tells him he’s still wearing his ring. Viktor is too, walking beside him in close formation.

Otabek competed against and was beaten by him at Worlds last year, and he remembers well the way he glided across the ice like he belonged there. It’s strange to see him standing aside now to coach someone, but when he remembers the banquet, the way Yuuri had seemed to lock him into a kind of trance, it makes sense. Though he was surprised they’d gotten _engaged_ so quickly. That’s going to get them a _lot_ of attention, Otabek suddenly realises, and with the way Yuuri’s programmes seem to evolve alongside his mental state, he’s going to be a fierce competitor, especially in the Short today. Something like fear strikes him hard in the chest, but he shrugs it off, like he shrugs off everything else. He looks to Yuri, who seethes at the sight of them and turns from the door to put all his attention on Yakov and Baranovskaya instead. Fair enough. But where are they going to place? He wants the gold, of course, but Chris always peaks here, JJ is indomitable with the number of quads in his repertoire, and something tells him Yuuri knows that just as well as he does. But Yuuri has the talent and ability to adapt to it. Maybe now, with that ring on his finger, he’ll have the willpower too. That’s frightening. He wonders what sort of chance he and Yuri stand.

Through the nervousness, he feels something else. Otabek is _excited_.


	2. Intermission

Otabek texts his family in an eclectic mix of Russian, Kazakh and English. His mother replies with a picture of his father and his sisters sitting round the TV screen, displaying the current standings. They all look well: happy and excited. Inzhu hasn’t bothered with her hijab while she’s inside, the swatch of colourful fabric draped over the back of the settee. Anara is cross legged on the floor, grinning up at the camera, eyes bright. His father is stoic as ever, just like Otabek himself. In a house full of enthusiastic, upbeat women, they have to be. Someone needs to anchor the family somewhere. “ _ CONGRATULATIONS BEKA! _ ” his mother writes, in English, and he grins down at it with uncharacteristic joy.

Someone kicks him in the back of the knee. “Oi.”

He turns, still smiling to himself. “Congrats, Yuri,” he says, shifting naturally to Russian.

Yuri beams like the cat that got the cream. “You too, Otabek.”

Yuuri and Viktor have already wandered off somewhere, by the looks of things. Sara is talking to her brother and Emil. Baranovskaya and Yakov are frantically conferring, heads close together, and Otabek’s own coach has gone to get water. For this moment, even though they’re still surrounded by people, they’re alone. 

“That score was amazing,” Otabek tells him, all earnest praise and admiration.

“I know!” Yuri squeals, despite himself, caught up momentarily in the thrill of it. “Yours wasn’t half bad either,  _ 112.38 _ !”

Otabek almost doesn’t expect the childish glee of it. It’s easy to forget he’s 15, especially when he is skating like that. He supposes he understands a little how people see him as a fairy, with that grace and elegance, like he’s flying across the ice. He still doesn’t quite agree. He didn’t even get to watch the full thing, too busy prepping for his own short programme, but Yuri didn’t look anything like some flittering sprite. He saw that ten year old from five years ago holding onto the  _ barre _ , shifting perfectly into position. He saw Viktor Nikiforov at Worlds last year, moving with the sort of poise you can only get with years of experience and training, but younger and more passionate. He saw determination, a soldier fighting through the front lines for the people he loves He saw that start of something completely beautiful. 

“Nothing compared to you,” he demurs, when he finally finds his voice again.

“You’re only five points behind,” Yuri insists. It’s not worth the argument, so Otabek just shrugs instead. Yuri seems to take that as acceptance and sidles up to knock against his shoulder playfully. “Dumbass,” he teases.

Otabek pats him on the head, and Yuri’s eyes blow wide with surprise. He’s too short to do this to anyone most of the time, even if most figure skaters are on the smaller side. There’s a sense of smugness to it, but no malice or lording it over him. After that performance, who could even _ try _ anything like that. “ _ Молодцы _ .”  _ Accept my congratulations, already _ . Yuri already has a 17 point lead on Christophe. He has 5 on him. Even if he makes a mistake on the free programme, that’s a huge head start. Otabek, even hiding it behind his usual stony attitude, is gleeful for the both of them. 

“ _ Спасибо _ ,” Yuri mumbles, and, surprisingly, doesn’t immediately move away. They stand for a moment, while the rest of the world moves around them, then he shrugs off his hand and ducks around him, cheeky and brash and brilliant as the sun. “Otabek, we're winning.” He sounds in awe.

“For now. We can't get too confident,” Otabek reminds him. The look what happened to JJ goes unsaid, but of course Yuri catches it anyway. His grin is far more vicious now. 

“Heh. I suppose not.” 

Yakov, dragging a small suitcase behind him, probably with Yuri’s skating things in it, and Baranovskaya stand to make their way over to them, walking as one even if they have been divorced for years. There is still a synchronisation between them, somewhere.

“Otabek,” Yakov grunts. It isn't hostile, just awkward. He hadn't trained under him for very long, but Otabek hadn't been a favourite student either. Too clumsy. Too stiff. Boring. Forgettable. Prude. 

“Coach,” he greets him anyway. Yakov nods, then turns back to Yuri.

“Yuratchka,” he begins, and suddenly Yakov is beaming. “Let's get you something good to eat tonight. My treat.”

“Can Otabek come?” Yuri asks, quick as a heartbeat.

“I suppose so,” Yakov replies, shrugging, before Otabek can even realise what was asked. Not that he looks best pleased about it, but right now Otabek doubts Yakov could turn him down for anything.

“It's okay. I need to go over my programme for tomorrow with my coach,” he tries to say, but Yuri’s face falls as if someone just drowned a kitten in front of him. 

“You don’t want to come?” Yuri asks, and Otabek realises with a sudden sense of alarm that he doesn’t think he’ll be able to resist that look.

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” he insists, but falters under Yuri’s determined stare.

“You’re the one who asked to be friends,” he reminds him.

“Alright then,” Otabek finally concedes, and at the very least Yakov seems to approve of his attempt to gracefully decline. Their eyes meet, and he gives a sharp nod. Yuri tugs his arm, and Otabek signals to his coach across the room, who has finally tracked him down, that he’s going out. Luckily, the vague gestures he makes in the direction of Yuri, Yakov and Baranovskaya seem to get the message across. Coach nods, holding up the bag with his costume and skates in to confirm he has them, and mouths something he doesn’t catch back at him, before he’s swept up in Baranovskaya’s sudden stream of speech, pointing out potential improvements to both Yuri and him. It’s a little unnecessary, he can’t help but think, to fault  _ him  _ too. After all,  _ he  _ isn’t her pupil, he’s the competition even, and he owes her absolutely nothing. But maybe she remembers that summer camp too, how he gave up on ballet for lack of talent and concentrated on powering through with determination alone. Maybe she’s compensating for the five years of ballet practice he’s lacking. The really artistic ones, he’s noticed, can be that way, taking any chance to help others along, no matter how gruffly. Yakov is absolutely the same way. He saw on TV how he coached Yuuri at the Rostelecom Cup on Viktor’s whim, which is probably why he isn't reluctant to pitch in with feedback as well. 

They walk quietly and peacefully enough across the road and down the street. Yuri wants paella after he saw Yuuri and Viktor’s from yesterday lunch on Instagram, and although Baranovskaya seems apprehensive about all the rice ( _ carbohydrates _ , she hisses, and Otabek says nothing, thinking about the amount of naan bread he probably eats on a weekly basis) but they are all dazed by his world record, still high on the shock and thrill of  _ 118 points _ . Finally, they find somewhere that meets Yuri’s exacting standards, and sit at a round table inside. The sun has gone in and the chill is starting to come through, and Otabek wishes he’d thought to bring his leather jacket to the stadium, as well as his training. Even shielded from the slight breeze, he feels the cold, shivering despite himself. Then the waitress approaches, panicking slightly at the obviously foreign group. She ducks back behind the bar and is replaced by another girl, who must speak better English.

“Paella for four, please,” Yakov half-snaps. Then he seems to consider something for a moment and catches Otabek's eye.

“Do you drink?” he asks in Russian.

“On special occasions,” he replies, stiffly.

“A bottle of red,” Yakov tells the waitress. “And water.”

The waitress looks relieved at the relatively simple order and runs it back to the kitchen, followed by the drinks. Four glasses. Yuri, sitting beside him, tenses with anticipation. The waitress goes around, pouring the wine, and pauses to hover over Yuri’s place, questioning. Yakov nods once, sharply, and Yuri lights up as he watches the ruby red liquid tumble around the bottom of the glass.

“Just the one, mind you.” Otabek is surprised Yakov is even allowing that. “And only because you won the world record, or you'd never catch me letting you drink  _ anything  _ the night of a competition.” He glances down at his own drink. It really  _ is _ only rarely that he drinks, and of course when he's away from his family. Perhaps he doesn't really observe any religion anymore, but there's no need to push it in their faces either. Besides, he's an athlete. He needs to stay on form.

“ _ Ваше здоровье! _ ” Yakov calls, lifting his drink. Yuri picks up the glass, almost reverently, tracing the rim with the pad of his forefinger, then raises it to clink with the other three. Then he returns it to his lips and takes a cautious sip, followed by a pleased hum.

“Alright, Yakov,” Yuri sighs, placing the glass down. He's making it last. Otabek would have expected him to gulp it down against orders and demand another. He cradles his own between his palms, then sips it. The alcohol warms him, just a little. Yakov takes a hearty swallow, as does Baranovskaya. He wonders if Coach will he annoyed if he finds out he's been drinking. He's 18 now, legal to drink in most countries, technically an adult. This really shouldn't feel like as big a deal as it does. Then he thinks about it, and realises that  _ it's who you're with, Beka _ , because he never would have had cause to imagine himself sitting in this group at all.

It's the awkwardness of being involved in something so intimately familial.  It's almost ritualistic, and he feels, just a little, like an intruder in some auspicious event. 

Then Yuri knocks him on the arm and beams in his direction. “To a gold and silver medal tomorrow!” he declared, raising the glass back up in invitation. Otabek taps his to it. 

“Alright.” He knows what Yuri means. “To my first Grand Prix Final gold medal,” he says anyway, face blank. Yuri’s face falls, then shifts into something far more determined.

“I'll let that slide so you keep dreaming until tomorrow,” he snorts, throwing his head back. His hair falls about his head, and it's graceful even if it's violent. That seems to be the case for almost everything when it comes to Yuri Plisetsky. 

Yakov doesn't seem too concerned about the arrogant streak Yuri is showing, grinning, shark-like, across the table. That in itself is troubling, but he chokes it back. If anything, he can’t help wanting to celebrate, just a little, that JJ messed up. It wasn’t good, no, he’d felt something horrified resonating deep in his chest when he glanced behind him to see JJ fall like that, but it means one of the fiercest competitors is safely in 6th place. 

The paella arrives, the waitress setting it carefully in the middle of the table, and they eat. It is delicious, Otabek has to admit, between bites of carefully seasoned rice and prawn and meat and pepper, and sips of the red wine he feels just a little guilty for. True to his word, Yakov only allows Yuri the one glass. He’s still surprised by how compliant he is about the whole thing, almost reverent. Maybe it’s a sign that Yuri is being treated like an adult now, and is deciding to behave accordingly. Otabek doesn’t know for sure, doesn’t know what agreements were made between him and Yakov; he can’t. He has his own little wagers with his coach though, and he imagines this is something similar. He remembers two years ago, his first in the senior division, when his coach back then promised him bike lessons if he won nationals. (He did.) At the moment, with his current coach, it’s  _ “if you make the podium, I’ll take you out for shisha.” _  Usually, he’s not allowed it, for obvious reasons, and he isn’t stupid enough to ignore his coach when it comes to this kind of thing, but like alcohol it’s a treat.

When they finish, Yakov insists on paying the full bill, even though Otabek tries to convince him to let him pay his share. They step out into the cold darkness, Yuri shivering even with his jacket on. He even had the sense to put a proper coat on too. 

“We need to speak with Yuratchka about his program tomorrow, sorry,” Yakov grunts, placing a hand on his shoulder. Otabek wants to be surprised at the name, how affectionate and informal it is, but he can’t be. They could almost really look like his parents, if it weren’t for how drastically different they look physically, like Yuri’s pale blond hair compared theirs: Yakov’s thinning, salt-and-pepper grey and Baranovskaya’s only kept dark using dye (and even then, it’s easy to see the whispers of grey near her scalp).

“It’s fine,” he replies. Really, it is. He needs to talk about his routine with his coach too; what can be improved from yesterday, what the competition might be like at the Four Continents and Worlds from the results, all the obligatory analysis to prep for the next day and beyond.

“See you, Otabek,” Yuri calls.

Otabek just nods in his direction, waving a hand behind him and turning to make his way ahead of them towards the hotel. It really is freezing at this point, and he can’t wait to get back to his room and a warm shower. He hurries into the lobby, rubbing his hands together for the friction. Maybe he’ll buy a coffee while he’s down here, he knows that there’s a bar that should serve it, even this late. He stops a moment to consider, toying with the loose change in his pocket, and looks for a sign pointing him in the right direction. It gives exotic names to everything, but luckily the descriptions are in both Spanish and English.  _ “Bar” _ is apparently the same in both either way.

It’s lit just the right amount, is blissfully warm, and he isn’t the only one dressed like he’s just been dragged through a hedge. Sara Crispino is sitting with Mila Babicheva in a corner, both in tracksuit bottoms, the two apparently making their way through their second bottle of wine. They’re giggling, heads close together, mouths moving frantically. Probably gossipping. He wonders how Sara managed to lose Michele, he’d seen her sitting with him, Emil, Yuuri and Viktor in the stands earlier, then turns his attention back to the bar. There are two men tending it, one polishing a glass, the other talking to a customer. In a red and white jacket.  _ Ah _ . 

Almost hesitant, Otabek slides onto the seat next to JJ, and the bartender gives him a look. “Double espresso, please,” he orders.

JJ glances at him sidelong, hair falling over his eyes. “Otabek! Second, eh?” The cheer in his voice is so strangely false, nothing like how he usually talks. 

“Mm,” he hums, shifting a little anxiously. “Are you alright?”

It isn’t that he  _ likes  _ JJ. He’s pretty certain barely anyone does. He’s obnoxious, and rude, and arrogant, and irritatingly good at everything he does. But nor does he like watching talented people fuck up quite that badly. It was the same feeling he had watching Yuuri’s performance last year, the infuriating sting of the missed potential. 

JJ slumps, hitting his head against the bartop. “I’ll live. It’s JJ style.” He flourishes his hand weakly, letting it drop afterwards.

Otabek was only coming for coffee, but from the smell of his breath, JJ has been drinking something a little stronger. “Does your fiancée know you’re here?”

“I snuck out of our room,” he snorts, turning his head to stare at him. “You were the reason I fucked up you know.”

Otabek frowns, eyebrows knitting together. He leaves the question unspoken, which seems to infuriate JJ. 

“The way you powered through those jumps, man.” Pulling himself back up to sit properly, JJ runs a hand through his hair. He looks lost. “It was insanity. The whole way through your program you looked so certain. It got me.”

He has no idea what he should say here. He’s not exactly an expert at social interaction. He never has been. He remains steadfastly silent. The bartender places his cup of coffee in front of him, and he nods to him in thanks. 

“ _ Coffee _ ? At this time of night?” JJ looks aghast. “How will you sleep ready for tomorrow?”

“I’ll be fine.”

If they were outside and it wouldn’t get him kicked out, JJ would probably have spit on the ground in front of him. Instead he scoffs, and gestures at the empty shot glass in front of him. The bartender, however apprehensive he may look about it, lifts a bottle of vodka to refill it. “You’re an arrogant son of a bitch, Otabek.”

That’s a little rich coming from him. Otabek isn’t the type to say that, though, so he sips his coffee instead. It’s hot, strong, bitter. Perfect for a cold night. He would have stayed silent, perhaps they’d have sat there until he finished his drink and left JJ to wallow in his misery, but after a pause JJ starts talking again. 

“You know, I’m meant to be the arrogant one. How did I manage to fuck up? I got so caught up in my head, Otabek, maybe that’s how Yuuri felt last year, I don’t know. I saw you skate and thought  _ damn, he’s probably going to beat me _ , but rather than fight it I fell into the fucking trap.” He clenches a fist. Otabek doesn’t know whether he needs to think about catching the blow or dodging it. JJ doesn’t swing though, just throws back the vodka and slams his hand on the table.

“I’m cutting you off,” Otabek announces. “What room are you staying in?”

“406,” he croaks. Otabek drains his coffee in a couple of gulps. It burns his throat, collects in his stomach where it makes him feel a little bit ill for a moment, but then it passes and he gets to his feet, sliding twenty euros across the bar to the bartender.

“Does that cover it?” he asks.

“Just about,” he replies, grimacing. 

Otabek digs into his pocket to find the last of his spare change, and places that down too, before hiking JJ’s arm over his shoulder to the lift.

“You didn’t have to,” JJ complains.

“Pay me back tomorrow.”

“Hah! I’ll forget!”

The doors slide open with a  _ ding _ . Otabek presses the button for the fourth. Coach will probably be waiting in his room for him. He’ll probably be infuriated.

“My parents will kill me if they knew I was drinking,” JJ chuckles, running a hand through his hair and stumbling backwards to lean against the wall. His eyes fall on the number displaying the current floor as it ticks upwards. 

“Drink water,” Otabek tells him.

“Will do,” he sighs. “Isabella will kill me too.”

Otabek shrugs. The lift gets to his floor, and thankfully his room is one of the first. He raps his knuckles against the door, and after a moment of fussing, JJ’s fiancée opens it.

“JJ, didn’t you take your…  _ oh _ .” She glares at JJ, pulling him into the room. “Damn it, JJ! Uh, you’re Otabek, right?” She glances up at him.

“Isabella?” he guesses.

“Yep. Please tell me you  _ found  _ him like this rather than sitting and watching it happen.”

He nods. She looks skeptical, then sighs. “Fine. Thanks for bringing him up.”

“No problem.” He hovers anxiously for a moment, watching JJ stumble towards the bed and on top of the covers.

“How much did he drink?” she asks.

“No idea. Make him drink water.” 

“Not very talkative, are you?” She looks irritated. He supposes she has the right to be. “Fine. Thanks again. Good luck tomorrow.”

She closes the door, doesn’t slam it. He guesses that’s as good a sign as any. Shaking his head, he turns back towards the lift, checking his watch.  _ 10:24 _ . Coach is going to kill him.

Still. Life goes on. He steps inside, presses for his floor, and tries to ready himself for tomorrow, come what may.


	3. Aftermath

Coach almost seems to pout as he steps off the ice, arms folded over his chest, eyebrows furrowed. “You’re going to miss the podium.”

“I know.” He slides the guards onto the blades of his skates, tugs the soft blue jacket over the top of the white spandex, feeling it drag over the rhinestones on his shoulders. 

He sits at the kiss and cry, not sure whether or not he’ll beat JJ. He doesn’t. The realisation hits him hard in the chest, could wind him. He doesn’t let it show. He can’t. He smiles, just a little, and waves to the camera, clutching the teddy bear he picked up off the ice to his chest.

Well, damn it, if JJ has knocked him from a place on the podium, Yuri had better win gold for the both of them.

“ _ Давай _ !” he yells, watching him step onto the ice. That look of a soldier is there, burning fiercely, screaming out for victory. Yuri looks like he is screaming inside. It shows in his skating, in the  _ passion _ behind the  _ Allegro Appassionato _ , the intensity of his footsteps, the speed and spring and weight of his jumps through the air, and  _ oh god, he really will win _ . Yuuri’s free skate was incredible, would have beaten him to the gold, deserved it, really, but Yuri might just sweep it out from beneath his feet.

His expression says he won’t let himself do any less.

He sidles up to him after he steps down from the kiss and cry himself, beaming with victory, brimming with enthusiasm.

“Congratulations.”

“Otabek,” he begins, and he sounds so excited, breathless and still teary-eyed from the exertion of skating such a difficult piece. “How could you let JJ onto the podium instead of you?  _ Idiot _ .”

He stares for a moment, surprised. That wasn’t what he expected to hear. “Sorry,” he grunts, shifting awkwardly.

Yuri kicks his shin, gently. Only nudges it, really. There’s not enough aggression behind it, maybe he got all of  _ that _ out of his system when he was skating and this is just the aftermath. “Kazakhstan goes in the Four Continents, not the European Championships, right?”

He nods.

“Good. We can both win gold and then at Worlds you can finally get your silver.”

“My gold.”

Yuri snorts. “ _ Sure _ . Whatever you say.”

Otabek flicks his forehead, at the side, on the edge of his hairline. Yuri yelps, knocking his hand away, and gapes at him. Then snickers, then doubles over giggling. “ _ Fuck _ , Otabek, I _ won _ !”

“Congratulations.”

“Otabek! I won gold in my senior debut! I broke one of the world records, I…”

“The best senior debut ever,” Otabek says, decisively.

Yuri goes suddenly quiet and grins. “Yes!”

“Only just,” Yakov reminds him, almost sneaking up behind.

“Oi! Yakov!” he yells, pivoting around and then tumbling towards the floor. He must have forgotten he was still wearing his skates. Otabek catches his arm, stops him falling completely, and helps him steady himself back onto both feet.

“Watch yourself.”

“Yuratchka!” Yakov snarls, grabbing Yuri’s shoulder. “You still have the exhibition skate tomorrow, now isn’t the time to start twisting your ankle, damn it!”

Yuri scoffs, knocking his hand away. “I’m fine.”

Otabek lets his hand drop away from Yuri’s arm, standing by awkwardly again. Yakov launches into a lecture, glaring down at his student, and Otabek edges away, to find his own coach again. Maybe Yuuri too, congratulate him. And JJ, despite the slight bitterness at being beaten. But when he glances around, Coach is nowhere to be found (probably looking for  _ him _ ), and Yuuri is making his way down from the balcony where he watched Yuri’s free skate. He’s probably going to find Viktor. JJ is with Isabella. She seemed nice enough last night, he supposed, albeit irritated, but could he blame her? He did bring her fiancé to her room late last night, staggeringly drunk. Obviously, he got over it fine. Even if that did mean Otabek lost, part of him is relieved. None of last night was  _ his _ fault, but he’d hate to face the wrath of someone as protective as she seems to be if she decided to lay the blame on him.  _ Must be nice.  _ Family is one thing, can be stifling with their encouragement and affection sometimes, but it’s another altogether when someone  _ chooses _ to stand by and support you like that.

He thinks of Anara, when he was visiting home, and she was twelve and just starting boxing, asking him to go on a run with her before morning prayers. He thinks of Inzhu, asking for a dozen selfies every time he goes, because “ _ if I tag your Instagram, I’ll get more followers, you never even post and yet you have more than me because you’re famous, but being your sister doesn’t hurt either, so do your damn brotherly duty and suck it up _ ”. He does, of course, because he’d do absolutely anything for his sisters. He thinks of  _ agape _ .

He looks at how tenderly JJ wraps his arms around Isabella, and sighs. Best not to ruin the moment.

So he glances back at Yuri, who is talking animatedly with Yakov, scratching the top of his head. Baranovskaya has joined them, and seems to tell him off, going over to brush her hand over where he’d mussed the hair. The medal ceremony will be soon. Mila won the ladies’ singles, followed closely by the quiet American girl, Katie, and Sara, and one of the Russian teams won pairs. Seems they swept the competition this year.

He slips away. Coach conveniently reappears off to one side, apparently waiting for him. “Are you going to do the exhibition tomorrow?” he asks. Otabek shakes his head. He’d prepared for it, of course, but he doesn’t have the heart to skate it without a medal.

“I’ll stay and watch it, though,” he decides. He should support Yuri, and there have been whispers that the Japanese Yuuri has something spectacular planned. Besides, after what he heard the other night about last year’s, he won’t want to miss the banquet for the world.

For tonight though, after the medal ceremony and all the formalities, he lies awake in bed, listening to the wind blow outside, and doesn’t cry. In the morning he wakes up to the bright December sun peeking through the gaps in the curtains and remembers everything is going to be okay. He dresses, brushes his teeth, sprays his hair back just enough so that it doesn’t get sticky but still stays in place under his helmet, and jumps onto his bike. Barcelona is beautiful, especially at this early hour when the air is still crisp. Otabek is a morning person, even if he does have a tendency to stay up half the night; it’s a collection of habits that always seems to result in too little sleep. That’s probably half the reason he’s grown to love coffee so much.

He stops at a Starbucks because he doesn’t know Spanish to recognise anywhere else as a coffee shop. He orders what he usually does: black, Americano, and sits tucked in a corner cradling the paper cup between his hands. Usually he would bring a book or something with him, and if he really started to get into it buy another drink when the first was done. But he’s never been a fan of Starbucks, and the burnt taste of the coffee in his mouth reminds him why. He chugs it down anyway, almost without tasting it, and at least the caffeine still hits.

When the door swings open next, it is Mila and Sara with their heads close together, mumbling streams of sentences to each other intently. Otabek debates whether he should greet them or hide, before deciding to do neither and let them approach him if they want to instead.

They order their drinks, Mila leaning against the counter and tossing her hair back, Sara drumming delicate, thin fingers on the top. He looks away. He doesn’t want to seem like a creep or anything. A moment later though, he hears his name, and watches the two of them slide into the seats across from his, along with two identical concoctions of crushed ice, syrup and whipped cream.

“Is there even any coffee in that?” he can’t help but blurt out.

Mila shrugs, sipping whatever it is. “I dunno, but it’s good.” They speak English for Sara’s benefit, and she tuts at him.

“It’s delicious. You should try it.” She holds out her cup, straw extended towards him, and he cautiously leans forward. It’s cold and sweet and the taste makes him cringe.

“It’s sweet,” he says, unable to come up with any better response.

“Mhm. Better than that bitter crap,” Mila comments, offhand, tilting her head towards the cup he is still clutching between his palms.

Well. For once he can’t really argue that. He takes a sip and grimaces. “Best I could find.” That’s a lie, technically. The hotel’s was better the night before the free skating, but he doesn’t really want to go back to the bar just yet. That’d look far too much like he was drowning his sorrows.

“Can’t believe how they overscored JJ,” Sara almost spits, shaking her head. Her dark hair ripples, shining under the artificial lights.

“I know! He messed up so much at the start, he was sloppy the whole way through, what were the judges thinking?” Mila sighs, and switches to Russian. “Should have been our Beka up there, right?”

Otabek isn’t really sure what to say in response, so he just stays silent. He doesn’t like this speculation. Maybe he thought the scoring was a little unfair too, but it’s the judges’ decision at the end of the day, however unhappy with it he is. Mila sighs. “Have a little faith in yourself for once?” She leans over to pinch his cheek, and his eyes widen in surprise.

“What are you two flirting over?” Sara asks, a reminder to speak English, sipping her frappuccino. Otabek was definitely  _ not _ flirting, but Mila shoots him a wink.

“Can’t tell all my secrets can I?” she teases her friend, throwing an arm across her shoulder and her legs across her lap. Otabek wants to cave in on himself with the embarrassment.

And as if it couldn’t get any worse, the doors swing open again, and JJ enters. He spots them immediately - of  _ course  _ he does - and waves, walking over. “Having a party without the king, are we?”

“Do kings wear bronze crowns now?” Sara asks, completely deadpan. JJ looks genuinely alarmed, furrowing his brows in confusion.

Mila grimaces. “Leroy, they don’t sell maple syrup coffee here.”

He seems to catch himself at that, swinging round to look her in the eye. “I don’t actually like maple syrup that much,” he tells her.

She snorts, swirling her straw round the clear plastic cup. “You did a photoshoot for that magazine, half naked, drizzled in it.”

“It was a photoshoot! And hey, if you know that, does it mean you’re secretly a fan after all?”

“Not a chance. Does your girlfriend know you’re out flirting with other women or should I tell her?”

JJ make a non-committal noise, wafting his head through the air. “My  _ fiancée _ . And Isabella doesn’t care if I flirt. She knows she’s the only one for me.”

Otabek stands, coffee cup in hand. “Congrats on bronze, JJ.” That’s the formalities done with. “Excuse me,” he grunts, aiming for the exit.

“Hey! Otabek!” Mila yells after him, jumping to her feet. “Don’t leave us alone with  _ him _ !”

He could feign ignorance, even after they just spent the last few minutes bitching about him right in front of him, but that's probably a little much. “Sorry.” He isn't really, but it seems better than saying nothing at all. When he glances over his shoulder through the window, JJ has seated himself across from them where he was.

He probably thinks he's pissed off at him because of the bronze medal now, especially since he mentioned it. He isn't. He's just pissed off at him in general and doesn't enjoy his company. Irritated, Otabek takes another sip of the coffee, before he gives up on it and tosses the remainder into a nearby bin before hopping back onto his bike. 

The hum and roar of the engine between his legs is something that comforts him more than anything else. Bikes are dangerous, but the smell of the petrol and the leathers reminds him of long summer days working in the garage with his father, of riding through the country ( _ his _ country) on trips back home, back when he wasn't based in Almaty. It reminds him of  _ home _ , and that's what he needs after a performance that was just short of spectacular.

It isn’t long until he’s out of the city centre proper and nearer the beach, where he parks his bike at the top of the embankment to gaze out over the ocean. It’s quiet, of course it is this time of year, only a few people scattered about. A gaggle of Spanish schoolgirls sitting on their coats, bags abandoned in the sand. An old woman, walking her yappy little dog. A couple, who on closer inspection seem to be Yuuri and Viktor. Yuuri notices him and taps Viktor on the shoulder. They both wave. Their rings flash golden in the morning sun. Otabek hesitantly raises a hand in response. Then they turn back to each other, and Otabek back to the sky. It’s a beautiful pale grey-blue, not the brilliant azure of summertime, but infinitely more calming. There are wisps of dark clouds lingering like smoke on the horizon, but the sun peeks through anyway. And god, Otabek loves the sun. 

He sits there, staring, deep in thought about nothing at all, until he checks his phone and it’s late enough in the morning to go back to the hotel. Coach texts him when he’s halfway there, and he stops to let him know that  _ no _ , he doesn’t have plans, and  _ yes _ he can talk about how everything went over lunch, and  _ okay _ , he can meet him at the restaurant. It’s more tucked away than the others he’s eaten at over the last couple of days, but he has his phone to give him directions. 

Coach asks if he wants to try paella. He shakes his head, almost smiles, and tells him he had it the other day. Otabek wonders if he is imagining the slightly disappointed look in his eyes as they order their garlic chicken and  _ tortilla _ instead. Coach, at least, had the foresight to learn enough Spanish to at least survive a week of ordering food. Otabek’s chicken comes with rice, and it’s flavoured with saffron and subtle spices, and it’s  _ delicious _ , but he still finds himself eyeing his coach’s omelette with its fluffy potatoes and bright red peppers. He isn’t kept on a strict diet or anything, he’ll never be as lean and willowy as most skaters anyway - he’s too short and broad-shouldered for that - but he is still an athlete. Stealing bites of his coaches food after a poor performance may not be the best idea right now. So he leans back, eats his chicken, and discusses the minutiae of where exactly he went wrong in his free skate, the things he didn’t have the energy to talk about or think about when he fell into bed last night: the jumps he over-rotated, the slightly off-balance spins, the distracted look in his eyes that betrayed the focus and determination that brought him here in the first place.

Phichit is the only one who didn’t make podium who performs in the exhibition. This doesn’t surprise Otabek, somehow. He hasn’t really spoken to him properly, but he gets the feeling he was never here to  _ win _ . The way he performs, with low technical difficulty but dynamic showmanship and charisma, shows that same thing. He only makes a couple of low-difficulty jumps. He makes eye contact with the audience. His spins are short, but flashy. He waves his hands, clapping perfectly in time with the music. He’s seen  _ The King and the Skater  _ once, a couple of years ago. It’s from one of the card game scenes, but he can’t remember which one it was exactly. When he finishes the routine, hands raised to the sky, the brightly coloured loose sleeves of his costume falling down his arms to his elbows, the crowd goes  _ wild _ . Otabek is almost surprised he didn’t bring confetti canons and streamers, just to polish the whole thing off.

JJ has his enthusiasm back. He doesn’t know the song, but he recognises it. It’s probably one of his band’s songs; he’d listened to them once or twice on Spotify, out of curiosity and the odd sense of camaraderie you had to have with your fellow skaters, even if you disliked them as individuals. Their first EP had been poorly crafted, their second decent enough, their first full album too commercialised. But JJ skates this with his heart on his sleeve now, and even if the song seems just a pedestrian, cliché love song, there’s something in his expression that makes it more. Otabek thinks of Isabella’s face when JJ crashed through the hotel room door the other night. He understands.

Yuuri’s begins romantic, a touching tribute to his coach and fiancé, and only gets more so when Viktor suddenly appears to skate with him, to thunderous applause. They dip each other low, and their rings glint in the blue and pink spotlights, matching their costumes, and then raise each other high, Yuuri lifting Viktor, Viktor lifting Yuuri, and Otabek feels a sudden jolt of fear for the rest of this season and beyond, because  _ oh no, Yuuri is just getting started _ . He really,  _ really  _ hopes, as Viktor lowers Yuuri into a goddamn  _ death spiral _ , that someone high up in the ISU decides to just let them compete in pair skating next season instead and leave the men’s singles well enough alone. After they finish skating, they link their fingers together to skate off the ice. Viktor presses a kiss to Yuuri’s hair before they’ve even got their skate guards on. Otabek is sure Yuri is feigning revulsion wherever he is, waiting his turn to skate.

He appears a couple of moments later, wearing shiny leggings and an oversized leopard print hoodie of all things, glaring at them as they wave excitedly at him, then practically stomps onto the ice. Otabek genuinely has no idea what he’s going to be skating to. When the first notes land, and he realises it’s  _ metal _ , and sees the almost savage grin on Yuri’s face, he almost jumps out of his seat with excitement. It’s nothing he recognises, but it suits Yuri to a  _ T _ .  _ Agape  _ had surprised him, after he’d watched videos of his junior performances and remembered that summer camp with Yakov.  _ Allegro Appassionato  _ had been getting there, there was that aggression and drive behind it Otabek can’t help but associate with Yuri. This… This is perfectly him. And it’s  _ fun _ , his sort of fun. The sort of fun he had staying behind late after practice to skate to Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Motörhead. The sort of fun he had fixing up his bike after a long ride, blasting Manowar, Sabaton, Hammerfall. Yuri finishes after his final spin in a layback Ina Bauer, hands splayed either side, chest heaving, and Otabek shocks his coach, shocks Mila and Sara and JJ, who all sat up in the same box as him after they performed their own exhibitions, by jumping up and clapping, grinning brightly.

He is so,  _ so _ glad he befriended Yuri.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> otabek's taste in coffee and music is totally not identical to mine idk what u mean i'm not projecting.............


	4. Banquet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from this chapter on, i have a beta! thanks to aescipius for looking this over for me! after this chapter the pace should begin to pick up and there'll be lots of timeskips, so things should go a bit faster now (chapters will probably be longer too!).
> 
> i've also written a marginally less shit description.

Otabek takes his jacket off almost as soon as he steps through the door. It feels awkward on his shoulders when he lifts his arm too high, even though it was tailored at his coach’s insistence. He’s fashionably late (not out of any desire to be seen as fashionable, but because he’d actually really like to minimise the time spent in this sort of environment) so the banquet is already in full swing when he arrives.

It seems as if Yuuri (wearing a noticeably nicer suit than in the pictures from last year and his conferences this season: a deep, dark, navy blue) has taken a hint from last year’s fiasco, and is steering clear of the champagne for now, although Viktor looks slightly less reserved about it. Sara must have talked her brother and Emil Nekola in, because they are all standing in the middle of a heated conversation. The junior gold medallist, a sixteen year old American called Jonah, sweating and adjusting the starched collar round his neck, is eyeing the selection of drinks with burning curiosity. Otabek passes him a flute of champagne, as if it’s nothing. Jonah grins at him and tips the glass back before his coach can see.

Someone knocks his arm. It’s Mila again, shaking her head, curly red hair bouncing around her face. “Should you really be giving kids drinks, Beka?”

He shrugs. “You drink champagne when you win.”

“Or when you lose, if you’re Yuuri Katsuki,” she sniggers, then gasps to herself, grinning. “Wait, you won’t have seen that last year!”

“I saw photos.”

“What?” Now she just looks disappointed. “Damn. Thought I’d get to tell the story.” She pauses, and picks up a glass of rosé, tracing the rim with her fingertip. Her nails are painted red to match her hair, but her dress is covered in gold sequins reflecting the low lamplight. “How’s your first official Grand Prix Final banquet so far then?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I only just got here,” he replies, shifting onto the other foot.

Mila smirks, tipping back the contents of her glass before grabbing his hand and dragging him towards the dancefloor. “Let me be your first dance of the night then!”

Otabek lets himself be dragged over. He can’t think of any way to decline, and it’s not like it hurts him to dance with her. The music is a waltz right now, so he takes one hand in his and places his other on her waist. She’s very nearly the same height as him, tall for a female figure skater. He feels an acute pang of awareness of just how short he is for a man.

“Your bike is pretty cool,” she says, interrupting his thought process. “You should take me out on it some time, like you did Yuratchka. We all saw it on the news.”

That makes him uncomfortable. “Maybe,” he grunts, and glances away from her eyes to his shoes, because there’s a mischievous sparkle in them that he isn’t sure he likes the look of.

Mila sighs and giggles to herself. “Next time you come up to Russia, yeah? I’ll even buy you one of those gross black coffees you seem to like.” Her voice takes on a teasing lilt, but it’s all still friendly.

He shrugs, finally looking back up at her. Something in the set of her lips and the way her eyes crinkle tells him his answer - or lack thereof - isn’t exactly satisfactory. She looks a little irritated actually, like he’s a puzzle with a missing piece that she’s determined to find. He does what he does best, and stares back blankly. She beams, moving her hand from his shoulder to pinch his cheek. He stops abruptly, and Phichit and Katie, dancing while heavily engrossed in a conversation about “ _ The King and the Skater _ ”, knock into them.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” Katie shrieks, clasping her hands over her mouth.

“It’s okay,” Mila laughs, back in English.

“Still, oh my god, I’m so clumsy.”

“You just won a silver medal in an international competition for figure skating, Katie,” Mila reminds her.

“Clumsy off the ice!” She brushes a loose strand of blonde hair back from her face, giggles, and turns to Otabek. “You were fourth place in the men’s, right?” she checks. “Uh… Owen or something? It started with  _ O _ .”

“Otabek,” he corrects her.

“Oh yeah! Hi Otabek! I don’t think we’ve properly met before in person! I’m Katie Reynolds! Can I steal him for a dance, Mila? You don’t mind, do you Phichit?” she asks.

Phichit shakes his head. “It’s okay! Just DM me on Instagram later if I don’t catch you again, I need to find Yuuri anyway!” He disappears like a flash.

Mila looks disappointed for a moment, then smiles. “If he’s okay with it.”

This is the exact opposite of what Otabek had hoped for when he arrived. He holds his hands out anyway, and she takes them, holding both and swinging them. She steps on his toes, but she talks less than Mila, and scurries away quickly after the song ends, waving behind her.

He takes the chance to escape, ducking over to the other side of the room, only to have his momentary solitude destroyed by the weight of Chris’ arm landing on his shoulder. “Picking up the ladies, I see?” he asks, leaning in.

“No,” Otabek grunts, trying to shove him off.

“Someone has to do it,” Chris teases, leaning back against the wall. “I can flirt but everyone knows that’s all it is.” He’s only wearing a shirt as well, but his is black with a white tie. It fits every line of his body perfectly. Otabek’s feels loose in comparison, gathering at the waist. Chris seems to notice he is looking at him. “Checking me out? Come on, don’t let the women lose hope now they have fresh meat to pick at.”

“No.”

Chris chuckles, slinging an arm across his back. He’s drinking red wine, judging by the dregs in the glass he’s dangling between his fingertips, and he must have already had a fair amount. Otabek can smell it on his breath. “Are you sure? With our Yuuri finally ‘fessing up to Viktor, that’s already almost half the men’s side at least slightly bent. I don’t know how gay Yuuri actually is, now I think about it.” He purses his lips as if concentrating on something of extreme delicacy and importance. “And I’m not sure of Phichit. The Russian Yuri is still a kid, he probably doesn’t even know. But you could be some sort of queer.”

“I like women,” he protests. It sounds weak.

Chris raises his eyebrows and looms over him. “But is it  _ just _ women?”

“Chris, leave him alone.” And Viktor Nikiforov is behind him, obviously amused by the scene.

“Ah! The man himself. I don’t know about you but I'm hoping for a repeat of last year. Your Yuuri was excellent on the pole.”

“Yes,  _ my  _ Yuuri,” Viktor bites back. “Not yours. Hands off the fiancé.”

“I'm  _ married _ , Viktor,” he reminds him.

Otabek looks up with a mingled expression of horror and surprise. “You're  _ what _ ?” he splutters.

“Married.” Chris winks. “Although Silvan has said he’d probably give me a pass for Viktor. I’ll have to ask if that’d extend to Yuuri as well.”

“Who’s Silvan?” Usually he's not one for pressing for an answer like this, but he's  _ shocked _ . It's not as if he wears a ring, and the way he skates is so overtly sexual most people assume he's still a bachelor.

“My choreographer. He really loves helping me work out  _ exactly  _ the best ways to move my body,” Chris purrs.

Viktor pulls a face. “I can't believe we actually  _ fucked _ once, you're disgusting,” he whines. Otabek  _ really _ didn’t need to know any of that.

“Excuse me,” he mumbles, almost desperate to escape, but Chris lays his palm flat on his shoulder again.

“Sorry, I was being a little inappropriate,” he admits.  _ A little _ . But it actually seems sincere, or as sincere as it’s going to get from him, and Otabek relaxes a little.

Viktor sighs, and sweeps past Chris to stand where he can better see them both. “So! Otabek! I see you befriended Yuri. Not  _ my  _ Yuuri, the Russian one,” he clarifies, a little unnecessarily. “That’s a feat.”

Otabek pauses. “How so?”

Viktor tuts. “He’s so abrasive. I love him, he’s like a little brother to me, although you  _ never  _ tell him I said that, but he is an absolute arse.”

Otabek stares. Chris laughs heartily, leaning against his friend, shaking his head.

“Come on! I’m dying to know, how did you end up whisking him away on your bike like that?”

After another second to think over his answer, he decides to be honest. “He was being stalked by his fangirls. I picked him up. We talked.” He shrugs, tugging at the cuff of his sleeve absently.

“You actually  _ talked _ ?” Chris asks, bewildered. “No wonder it made the news. You must be the quietest guy I know, and Yuri’s a brat.”

“You want to see bratty? Call him Yurio, Chris, he  _ hates  _ it,” Viktor guffaws.

_ Yurio? _ Otabek wonders, then clears his throat. “We just talked about stuff.”

Both the other men look doubtful, exchanging glances. It’s weird how well they bounce off each other, the sort of people who run on the same frequency. Luckily, it seems as if they agreed, in their own strange, silent way, not to bother pushing him. Otabek is grateful.

Then, suddenly he realises. “Where is Yuri?” he asks. He hasn’t seen him all night.

“Last I saw him he was out on the balcony. Said he needed fresh air or something,” Viktor tells him with a light-hearted shrug of his shoulders. 

“Thanks.” He raises a hand in a maudlin imitation of a wave, and starts to try and dig back through the crowd. Mila, by the refreshments, perks up in the periphery of his vision, jumping up as if to catch his attention, but he pretends not to see. 

There is a large balcony attached to the hall where the banquet is being held this year. He’d noticed it when he came in, but not thought much of it. Now that he looks, one of the doors leading out to it is slightly ajar, and there’s a cold breeze seeping through the crack. He finds his jacket, draped over the back of a chair, and takes it out with him, just in case. 

Sure enough, Yuri is out there, in a charcoal grey suit with his hair up like how he wore it for the free skate, but he isn’t alone. He’s leaning on the railing, staring out over Barcelona, and Yuuri Katsuki is next to him. Suddenly, Otabek is an intruder, but they don’t seem to have noticed him. Despite every instinct screaming at him to leave, he can’t help but feel compelled to stay. They’re speaking quietly, but he can still hear. The night is cold but still, and there’s not much wind to blow the sound away. Otabek smooths the folds in the fabric of his jacket.

“You’re just trying to lure me in like I’m fucking Hansel and Gretel so you can fatten me up on katsudon or something,” Yuri drawls. “Saboteur.”

Yuuri chuckles, scraping the toe of his fancy leather shoe across the stone on the floor. “I’m not sure my mother would be particularly pleased to hear you compare her to an evil witch who eats children.”

Yuri freezes, and swings round to look at Yuuri. His face is visible now, and it’s struck with horror. “That’s not what I mean, stupid Katsudon!”

“I know  _ that _ , Yurio,” Yuuri laughs, and pats him on the top of his head. Yuri gapes, aghast. “Your bark is worse than your bite.”

Yuri flushes an angry red and slaps Yuuri’s hand away, scowling. “Oh fuck off!”

Yuuri shakes his head. “I’m proud of you, you know. Sure, I’m annoyed I didn’t win gold, but I’m proud of you for it.”

“I don’t want your  _ pride _ , I want you to keep competing,” Yurio barks, then slams his jaw shut. Otabek can’t see Yuuri’s face, but his shoulders have stiffened. “I, um...”

“I’m staying. Viktor is coming back and I’m staying. I promise,” Yuuri eventually chokes out. Yuri casts him a doubtful look, mouth set a little too hard, then holds out his hand.

“Shake on it,” he demands. Yuuri does. Otabek backs away from the door, turning back towards the ballroom. No, he shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but he hadn’t realised that the two Yuris were that close, nor that there was any question of Yuuri’s retirement. The Hot Springs on Ice event generated a bit of buzz months back, but Otabek hadn’t paid an awful lot of attention and it seemed more centred on getting Viktor to coach them than anything personal between the two, and he’d dismissed the rumours about Yuuri’s retirement as being based on the poor second half of last season. It surprises him, although in hindsight it probably shouldn’t. He  _ had _ spoken about Yuuri a fair amount when they’d gotten tea together, he supposes, but it had usually related to the competition, or Viktor, or his time in Hasetsu.

He turns away from the door, rolling up his sleeves to the elbow and starting to move away, but is too lost in his thoughts to realise Mila has found him again. “Beka!” She’s beaming, hands clasped in front of her. “I lost you for a while there! Katie kind of interrupted earlier.” She laughs, a little anxiously, and tucks a strand of her hair back behind her ear. “How’s your evening been so far?”

Otabek shifts in the opposite direction to the balcony, scratching the short hairs at the nape of his neck. They’re soft as he runs his fingers against the grain. “Okay,” he says.

“Oh come on! Just  _ okay _ ?” Mila exclaims. “There’s an obvious solution to that.”

Otabek really hopes she isn’t trying to talk about her company or another dance. He just wants to wait for Yuri to finish his conversation so he can spend the rest of his evening with someone who doesn’t expect an answer to every thought that flies into their head on a whim. Mila looks at him expectantly, the exact opposite of what he needs right now, then cackles. “Open bar!” she reminds him, gently knocking him with her bare shoulder.

“I don’t want to get too drunk and do something like Yuuri Katsuki last year,” he tells her.

“He drank  _ sixteen _ glasses of champagne, Beka, I don’t think one will do you much harm. Plus you’re sturdier than him,” she throws out there, casually, and he doesn’t miss the way her eyes trace the shapes of the muscles in his forearm.

“I guess,“ he shrugs, as neutral as possible.

Mila pouts. “Come on! How often do you get this chance? Is it even legal for you to drink in Kazakhstan yet?” He shakes his head, and she gives a low whistle. “Damn. Like, I'm sure you do anyway, but…” He shrugs. “What? You don't?”

“I do. Sometimes.” He thinks of passing the junior gold medallist a glass earlier, even though he's younger and America's drinking age is just as old as Kazakhstan’s, and smirks a little, despite himself. That catches Mila’s attention, and she giggles behind her hand, very proper and feminine for the girl who was literally suggesting what amounts to  _ technically _ underage binge-drinking in the same breath.

“Come on!”

“Alright then,” he caves, finally.

Mila grabs his hand, pulling him towards the refreshments and the glasses of Moët & Chandon. He takes one, his first drink, actually, and sips it. He isn’t usually fond of wine, sparkling or otherwise, regardless of where in France it was made, but he doesn’t have any particular problem with it either. Mila has one too, and she’s far more enthusiastic about the selection.

“Beka! Drink up!” she chides him. “Or I’ll ask for vodka shots and challenge you to a drinking contest.”

He takes a large swallow, and it fizzes in his throat. “Not vodka. You’re Russian, I’d be at a disadvantage.”

Mila gapes. “Did you just make a  _ joke _ ?”

“It happens.” She looks impressed, and that unnerving feeling bubbles back up in the pit of his stomach. Or maybe it’s just the champagne.

“Hey, Beka-” she begins, but then Otabek feels a familiar kick to the side of his shin and turns around.

“Otabek,” Yuri greets him with a smile.

Mila looks peeved for a moment, then waves half-heartedly at him and wanders away to look at what food is available, so Otabek turns his attention fully on his friend. “Nice hair,” he says, waving his half empty champagne flute in Yuri’s general direction.

Yuri’s lip quirks, and he distractedly runs his finger over the braids on the side of his head. “Lilia said she thought it’d stay neater.”

“Hm.” Otabek pauses to slip his jacket back on, considers it a moment, and then figures,  _ why not _ ? If the junior gold medallist can, why not Yuri? “Shall we get drinks?”

“You’ve already got one,” Yuri reminds him, pointing at the glass in his hand.

“Do you want to get a drink?”

“I’m underage,” he grunts.

Otabek gives him a long stare. “You drank the other day.”

“With Yakov!” Yuri glances around to see if he’s nearby, but he looks happily engrossed in conversation with Celestino, then chuckles. “You’re a terrible influence.” He nudges Otabek’s side with his elbow. “Alright then.”

Mila is busy talking to Sara and Mickey in the opposite corner of the room, so aside from Phichit fiddling with his phone, nobody is really near the refreshments right now. He waves, and Otabek nods. Yuri ignores him and snatches two glasses of sparkling cider from the table. He passes one to Otabek, who downs his champagne to be able to hold it, and then marches back in the direction of the dancefloor. After a short moment, Otabek follows. 

Viktor and Yuuri are slow dancing, but Viktor’s steps are clumsy, and he has his head too buried in the crook of Yuuri’s neck to notice where he’s going, almost colliding with a pair of Korean ice dancers. JJ is with Isabella, twirling her around, both gazing at the other as if they’re the centre of the universe. Yuri, when he turns his head to gauge his reaction, looks sickened. “Gross,” he mumbles, sipping his drink.

Otabek smiles to himself, and follows suit. The cider is a little sweeter than the champagne, less dry. It’s a bit better. “At least there’s no poles this time,” he quips, glancing down at Yuri for a reaction. He pales visibly, an achievement since he’s fair to begin with, and shudders.

“Thank  _ fuck _ . It was horrible, like they were on a rampage or something, these fully grown men acting like students.” A waiter passes by - there are a few scattered about with platters of  _ h'orderves _ , dressed in neat black waistcoats - and Yuri steals a voulevant, cramming it into his mouth and chasing it down with his cider. “Let’s dance, too,” he says, decisively.

Otabek quirks an eyebrow. “You want to  _ slow dance _ ?” he asks, dubious.

“No! Just normal dance. Show those idiots how it’s done.” His voice cracks a little at the end, stifling half a nervous laugh. “Or something.”

“I’m not that great a dancer,” Otabek admits.

“You can’t be that bad, I saw you dancing with  _ Katie Reynolds _ earlier. Everyone knows she’s a mess off the ice. Didn’t you see that video of her falling over on her skates that went viral a while back?” Yuri protests.

Otabek shakes his head. “I’m a social media dinosaur, remember?”

The realisation dawns, and after a moment of bemusement, Yuri looks  _ astounded _ . “God, you really are.” He shakes his head, back to his usual expression of mild distaste, then finds a side table to put his glass down, gesturing for Otabek’s. He throws the remains of his cider back and hands it over, then they step out onto the floor. Unlike the couples surrounding them, they don’t slow dance or touch, it’s just normal dancing. Otabek is worse at this than slow dance, where at least there’s some sort of idea of how you should move, but Yuri looks as if he is in his element, moving his arms and hips in time with the music. He’s impressed, but not surprised; he saw first-hand when he was only thirteen years old that Yuri was probably born to be a  _ danseur _ , why shouldn’t that grace translate into other kinds of dancing too? He stands back and watches for a moment, and then tries to join in and copy him, with far less success, but he can’t deny how _ fun _ it is. They probably look like idiots, dancing too fast for the current slow song, but it’s the shock of Yuri’s  _ Welcome to the Madness  _ after the  _ Stammi Vicino  _ duet all over again, and Otabek can’t bring himself to care.

He glances around at the company, at Yuuri who has paused practically carrying Viktor’s drunken body around the ballroom to smile indulgently at them, at Christophe hanging at the edge of his peripheral vision, observing them with another glass of red wine in his hand and a knowing twinkle in his eye, at all the other skaters absorbed with themselves or each other, and thinks that perhaps the banquet isn’t so bad at all.

When the party wraps up an hour later, Otabek finally finds his coach again, slightly worse for wear. “Getting close to Mila and Yuri, I see?” he teases him, and Otabek stares back blankly in his own sort of defiance. 

Yuri waves from down the hallway as Yakov and Lilia try to shepherd him into the lift. Otabek waves back, a warm feeling spreading from the centre of his chest, then realises something in a sudden panic, and darts down towards them. He slams his hand on the up button just as the lift doors slide close, and after the machinery takes a second to think about it, they open again.

“Yuri,” he pants, because he’s too tired from the food and the alcohol and the dancing to be sprinting down corridors. “Give me your Skype.”

Yuri’s eyes widen, and he nods. “Yakov. Do you have a pen?”

Yakov glares at Otabek for a minute, then at Yuri, then sighs, reaching into his coat pocket for a tiny notebook and a ballpoint. He passes it over, and Yuri scribbles the name down on the top page, tearing it out and handing it across. Otabek folds it carefully and puts it in his pocket. Lilia rolls her eyes. “Couldn’t you have done that earlier?” she scolds.

“Sorry. Have a good night,” Otabek apologises, feeling much calmer now he knows he and Yuri can stay in touch. But he can’t resist. “Yuri.” Yuri’s head snaps up from where he’d been observing the pattern on the carpet to lock eyes with him. “See you at Worlds.” The lift doors close again before Yuri can give his reply.

Otabek goes back to his coach, and takes out the piece of paper to stare at it. “Otabek,” Coach calls, waving a hand in front of him. He shakes his head fondly at Otabek’s dazed expression when he looks up. “Come on, you’ve got a long day tomorrow,” he reminds him.

“Alright.” He puts the paper back and rolls his shoulders. His joints are stiff.

“Let’s get you to bed. Once we’re back in Almaty, we’re going to be straight back into training. You have Four Continents to think about now.”

Otabek hums his acknowledgement, the pain of missing the podium that he’s tried to repress all night burning once more in his chest, and they make their way towards the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case anybody's concerned, don't worry: otabek and yurio are still endgame, doesn't mean mila can't try her best though haha.


	5. Quad Loop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> weeeeew this is late, sorry about that. i got really ill and started back at college so my motivation to write went down the drain temporarily. i meant for this to contain all of worlds but the leadup got away from me and didn't even get up to the sp before i'd written a chapter's worth but it's been too long since i updated so that's all gonna be put in the next one or two chapters instead.

Four Continents goes pretty much as expected. Yuuri wins gold, but tells the press that while,  _ yes _ , he and Viktor _ are _ engaged and plan to marry after he wins gold, it doesn’t count unless it’s the  _ whole  _ world. JJ wins silver, standing smugly on the other side of the podium, but Otabek snatches the bronze. It’s not what he really wants, but it’s a start.

He comes home and trains his quad salchow and toe loop to perfection, until he lands them with relative ease. He doesn’t have the flexibility of a ballet dancer like the two Yuris do, but he has strong legs. Jumping, for him, is fairly easy.

“Coach,” he says, one morning a week after Four Continents. “I want to try and learn to do a quad loop before Worlds.”

Coach looks up in surprise. “I don’t think you have time to incorporate it into your program, Otabek,” he warns him. “Shouldn’t you focus on what you have right now?”

“No,” he replies, suddenly decisive. “JJ beat me at the Grand Prix even with a disadvantage after the short program and a poor start to the free skate. I need to do something about it.”

Coach pauses, pursing his lips in displeasure at the thought. “Okay. But if you can’t  _ nail _ it by Worlds, I’m not letting you use it.”

“Thank you, Coach!” Otabek grins, brighter than usual. “Can we start now?”

With a despairing glance at his training schedule, Coach sighs. “Alright. If your mind is made up. But you’re using the harness.”

He nods. “That’s fine.”

Coach puts his clipboard on the top of the boards and skates towards the edge of the ice, sliding the guards onto his skates. “Wait here a moment. Warm up. Practice a couple of quad Sals or something to get you started,” he tells him, walking towards the supply closet. He wobbles on his skates, but manages to make his way over.

Otabek does as he’s told until Coach stumbles back, harness bundled up in his arms, and he looks relieved to be able to take the guards off and get back on the ice. “I  _ hate _ walking on skates,” he complains under his breath, picking the harness back up and holding it aloft. Otabek grinds to a halt at the centre of the ice, looking up at it. “Come put this on,” Coach tells him. He must know Otabek isn’t keen on the harness at all, know it feels embarrassing, like he’s a kid learning to do double toe loops for the first time, and with that in mind the slight smug expression on his face should irritate him.

Otabek is determined, as he straps himself in, letting Coach hold the other end and starting up again.

“Are you ready?” Coach asks, still looking unsure.

Otabek nods. “Yes.” Of course he is.

And it goes far better than either of them would have expected.

 

* * *

 

 

Their connecting flight at Sheremetyevo is delayed, but Otabek scans the news on his tablet and grabs a coffee to pass the time. It’s actually not too bad, and he clings to the red corrugated cardboard cup, letting the heat seep through to warm his fingers. Coach pulls a face, sliding into the seat across from him. 

“There’s nowhere to charge my phone. Can I see your tablet?” he asks. Otabek slides it across, and he searches through the news, then leans back with a sigh, passing it back. “Fucking Aeroflot.” Otabek raises an eyebrow. It’s unusual for his coach to swear, but the travelling is probably getting to him. He massages his forehead and leans across on his elbows to make eye contact. “Alright. You’re doing the quad loop?”

Otabek nods.

“Okay. Are you sure you know where you’re putting it in?”

He nods again.

Coach stretches his arms behind his head and grimaces. “I’m just anxious about it so late in the season. But you’ve taken to it so well. It’s  _ unnatural _ . If you can pull it off in competition, it’ll definitely help.”

“Yeah,” Otabek grunts.

“You’re replacing the triple salchow in your short program’s 3S3T combination with it aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

Coach snickers. “I hope you draw before JJ again for the short program. Maybe he’ll have another breakdown like at the Grand Prix final.”

Otabek’s eyes widen, and he sits up straighter. “Coach!”

“I’m not joking! Sure, he can knock out a couple of extra jumps but compared to yours his technique is sloppy,” he protests, leaning on the back two legs of his chair. “You’re consistent.”

“I want to beat him fair and square,” Otabek says.

His coach sits properly again and looks him over, evaluating, then grins, standing to ruffle his hair. Otabek almost knocks over his coffee in shock. “Attaboy!”

An announcement rings out over the loudspeakers. “Aeroflot flight 7XXXX to Helsinki now preparing to board at Gate 23.”

Coach perks up, groaning as he leans down to pick his bag up off the floor. “Finally!” Otabek drains the last of his coffee and gets to his feet, tucking his tablet under his arm and slinging his backpack over his shoulder.

It’s further down the terminal, and by the time they get there they’re almost ready to start boarding. Otabek finds his passport in his pocket, running his fingers across the blue and gold surface, before finding where he’d slotted his ticket in to bookmark his ID page and showing both to the lady checking them. She startles when she recognises his name and does a double take before  _ beaming _ . “Otabek Altin!” she gasps. He shifts uncomfortably under her gaze and nods. “Good luck on Thursday, and watch out for our Yuri!” she says, handing his documents back over and clapping her hands. 

“T-thanks,” he replies.

His coach huffs as he passes her his things, too. She smiles generously at him though, waving him after Otabek to board the plane. “ _ Allah _ , I hate when they do that,” he moans when they get into the metal walkway leading to the aircraft.

Otabek shrugs. “If she’s a fan, I can’t blame her.” 

_ Watch out for our Yuri _ , he thinks. How did she mean it? Watch out, he’s coming to get you, or watch over him?

Once he’s comfortably tucked into his seat and his coach is snoring next to him, he mulls it over before opening an ebook on his tablet and putting it firmly out of his mind.   
  


* * *

 

They stumble, half asleep, to the taxi rank, tugging their cases behind them. The surrounding area is fairly desolate, as is the wont of airports. Much as Otabek likes the  _ idea _ of flying over green fields and trees before he lands, he’s travelled enough to know it’s usually a lot more grey. Coach rubs his eyes, yawning as if he hadn’t slept the whole way there. “Well. Helsinki.”

It doesn’t help that it’s  _ cold _ \- not that Almaty is particularly warm either, but it’s definitely below freezing here. Otabek regrets not getting another coffee as he slumps, standing his suitcase up and perching on the top, legs stretched as far as they can after being cramped into the tiny seats on the plane and swollen with the changes in air pressure. “You ordered one, right?” he checks, just to make sure the jetlag hasn’t thrown Coach off enough that he’d forget to call for a taxi at all.

Coach nods, stretching his arms behind his head. “Have some faith, Beka,” he manages to force out between exaggerated yawns. “I’m not completely addled yet.”

“Not completely,” Otabek muses quietly and sardonically. Suddenly, Coach finds the energy to elbow him. He stumbles, almost knocking over his case, then once he’s straightened up chuckles quietly to himself. “Sorry.”

“No you’re not,” Coach snorts. A taxi pulls up, sleek and black with a yellow wedge on the roof. There are a couple of other passengers about, but when Coach stumbles over to ask if it’s theirs, the driver nods. “Come on, Otabek.” With a sharp nod, Otabek grabs his suitcase, slings the gym bag he used for hand luggage over his shoulder, and helps load them and Coach’s single bag into the boot.

“Are you here for the figure skating?” the driver grunts, and apparently he speaks Russian, pulling away from the airport.

“Yeah,” Coach replies.

“Competing?” Otabek can see in the rear view mirror that he’s raising an eyebrow, curious.

“Yeah.”

“Figured as much. I recognised that young Russian one. They had his face on all the posters. He was going to the same hotel.”

“Yuri?” Otabek cuts in, perking up.

“Maybe? Honestly, I only really pay attention to the speed skating,” the driver admits.

Understandable, Otabek supposes, sizing him up. He’s a big man with greying hair, large hands and dirt under his fingernails, the sort who looks as if he doesn’t have the patience to sit and watch men in frilly, sparkly costumes dance on ice skates. “Never cared for speed skating myself,” he replies, however. “I like hockey.”

“Eh, each to their own.” The driver pauses when the traffic slows entering the city centre. “Be honest, are you actually any good? I hear there’s a load of poor saps who come all the way here and get eliminated halfway through.” It’s not malicious, but Otabek is put on the defensive regardless.

“I won bronze at the Four Continents Championships and fourth place at the Grand Prix Final,” he says, coolly.

“Oh.” The driver goes silent, and Coach nudges him, warning.

To be fair, Otabek surprised himself. He sinks back into his chair, letting his head fall back against the headrest and sighing. If he hadn’t had the coffee, he might have fallen asleep, but it feels too awkward to let his guard down anyway, especially when he’s abroad. He’s the type who prefers to stay alert, because there’s always a slight feeling of threat when he’s under someone else’s power. (He wishes Coach would let him rent a bike or something, but he’d insisted that, for Worlds, it was more important that he concentrate on practice than exploring the city. Besides, it’s too cold to be biking on an unfamiliar machine in an unfamiliar country.)

Luckily, the driver doesn't turn out to be a serial killer, and he drops them safely outside their hotel. Coach passes him the money, taking a minute to process the unfamiliar notes first, and tells him to keep the change as they get out to unload the luggage. The hotel isn't the nicest they've ever been to, but it's not bad either. They check in, two single rooms next to each other, which is convenient, lug their luggage upstairs in the lift and fall into bed. Coach is out like a light within minutes, so Otabek slips out to his own room, pulling his suitcase behind him. He closes the door, sets it on the end of the bed and digs through to find his skates, sitting in their bag and sandwiched between thick jumpers and jeans. He places them carefully on the desk behind him, and pulls out sweatpants and a change of clothes for tomorrow before slamming the case shut, putting it on the floor, changing and crawling under the covers.

His phone blares at him hours later, rousing him from sleep. He grasps for his phone to turn it off, and winces at his own lack of foresight when he sees his battery has drained perilously low overnight. Coach would  _ murder _ him if he missed his alarm. He tugs clean clothes on, stumbles out of the room, barely remembering to grab his key card before he leaves, and knocks on his coach’s door.

Coach, bleary-eyed, opens the door with little grace and much irritation. “If I weren’t the one who told you to be here this early, I’d kill you, Beka.”

Otabek shifts awkwardly, brows furrowed. “Sorry?”

“ _ Hmph. _ ” He slinks back into his room, rooting through his case to find his own skates and looking Otabek over. “Where are your skates?”

“In my room. Aren’t we getting breakfast?”

“It’s four in the morning,” he says, as if it should be obvious. Otabek is well aware. He did drag himself out of bed after all. “They only start serving at seven. Practice first, it was the best time I could find you to practice. This isn’t the Grand Prix Final, you’re competing for ice time too.” Coach yawns, rubbing his eyes.

“Okay,” Otabek grunts, giving up.

“Get your skates, I’ll wait outside.” 

With a nod, he darts back into his room, pulling the bag from its place on the desk and dashing back out into the hall. Coach nods his head in the direction of the stairs, and they start making their way towards the rink across the road. There are already a couple of other competitors who had the same idea, apparently, from the looks of equally tired coaches half-dragging them. He recognises China’s Cao Bin, who looks the most awake of anyone here, but not the other skater, diminutive, probably only about sixteen, definitely Western. 

They all arrive at the same time, despite walking separately. Otabek nods to both his competitors. Cao Bin grins at him. “Otabek Altin! Shame I missed competing with you during the Grand Prix this year. Not been up to scratch,” he laughs. He’d had an injury shortly after last years Grand Prix Final, if Otabek remembers correctly, and he’s one of the older skaters, 26 years old already. This will probably be his last season. “I’m Cao Bin. Nice to meet you,” he finishes. His English is excellent, only lightly accented. Otabek shakes his hand when he offers it.

The stranger shrinks in the background, but his coach claps him on the shoulder, pushing him towards the two. “Hey there,” he mumbles, rubbing the back of his neck. “First season in seniors. Nathan Conquest. English.” He waves, half-hearted. 

“Welcome to seniors!” Cao beams, holding a hand out for Nathan to shake, too. Hesitant, he takes it. Otabek nods in his direction. Perhaps his own awkwardness around others is cause less shyness and more by natural reticence, but the result is largely the same. He can relate. Nathan seems to pick this up, and nods back with a smile that could easily pass for a grimace, but relates his gratefulness regardless.

The guards at the rink’s doors have been speaking with the coaches, and let them all in. “You skaters are insane, coming out this early,” one of them remarks, shaking his head. “You’re not even the first here.”

“We’re not?” Cao asks, eyebrows shooting up to his hairline. The man is almost comically expressive. 

“The first one came at three.”

Cao lets out a low whistle, Nathan bites his lip. They and their coaches make their way inside, where the lights are already on and the ice has already been scarred by someone’s skates.

Otabek wonders, when they draw near enough to see who it is, why he was surprised. Yakov turns and grunts at their presence. “Yurochka! You have company.”

Yuri digs his toepick into the ice and grinds to a halt, glancing up to see. He remains impassive as his gaze skips over Nathan and Cao, but his face lights up when his eyes land on Otabek. Grinning, he skates up to the boards, grabbing onto the edge and leaning over, ignoring Yakov’s cries for him to slow down before he slips and breaks his neck. “Otabek!” he yells.

Waving, Otabek steps forward and closer, shifting his skates on his shoulder. “Hey.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t knock JJ off silver. You’ve got to do better this weekend.” He leans over just far enough to punch him lightly on the shoulder. “I refuse to share a podium with him again.” Then he huffs, blowing on the hair that’s hanging in his face. He has it half up, so some of the volume has been taken out of the front at least, but his fringe still hangs in his eyes. He looks good. Healthy, even if he can’t be sleeping that well if the first thing he does after arriving from St Petersburg is to drag Yakov to practice at three in the morning (because Otabek is under no doubts as to whose idea  _ that  _ was).

“I’ll do my best,” Otabek promises. His quad loop is the trick up his sleeve, and not even Yuri is going to be allowed to know about it yet. Yuri grins at him anyway, and turns to skate back to centre ice. 

Cao whistles. “Guess we’re just furniture then.” He grins at Otabek, almost sympathetically. “I heard this Yuri kid was a real brat in juniors. But you’re friends, huh?”

“Yeah.” Otabek moves to sit on a nearby bench and start tying his laces on. On the ice, Yuri casually lands a clean quad toe. Nathan shivers in the peripheral of his vision. Cao sighs, wistfully. The other two start to lace up as well, alongside both Otabek and Nathan’s coaches. Once everyone’s skates are on, they glide out onto the ice. Yuri halts the lap he’s partway through to go over and join them. 

“Cao Bin? And..?” Yuri casts a questioning glance over Nathan, resting a hand on his hip.

Nathan looks conflicted and intimidated, even more than with the adults. “Nathan Conquest,” he blurts.

Yuri looks blankly back at him. “Where from?”

“England.”

Yuri snorts, pulling the band from his hair with a flourish. His hair falls back around his face, slightly mussed. “You’re not doing ice dancing or something? When was the last relevant British singles skater?”

“Yurochka!” Yakov barks from the sidelines. Yuri looks moments away from spitting dismissively on the ice just to spite him, Otabek and Cao both glance at each other at the audacity. Nathan is immobilised, gaping.

“Do you mind talking to my skater like that?” his coach yells. He has a heavy accent that Otabek can’t recognise well enough to place, but it makes his words more difficult to understand than he would expect.

Yuri snaps his head in the coach’s direction and lets out an irritated groan that sounds too much like a challenge for it to slide “Yuri,” Otabek snaps. “Don’t be rude.” Yuri freezes, and turns, mortified, to meet Otabek’s eyes. Calm but firm, he shakes his head at him, warning.  _ No more. _ Visibly a little shocked at  _ Otabek _ reprimanding him, Yuri falls silent, before skating over to knock his shoulder against Nathan’s.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I guess.”

Nathan finally seems to pull himself together and shrugs. He doesn’t say anything. Otabek manages to catch his attention a couple of minutes later. In the way that only two people who aren’t good with words can, they communicate silently, with looks.  _ Are you okay? Yes. _ Cao throws worried looks in his direction, but soon he is distracted by practice and exchanging long strings of incomprehensibly fast Chinese with his coach.

Yuri sidles up beside Otabek and tugs at his sleeve. It’s a surprisingly childish gesture from somebody who takes such care to try and appear grown up. “You’re not pissed at me, are you?”

Otabek frowns. Shrugs. “Not really. But you were being a dick.”

Yuri looks down at his skates, contemplative. “Oh.”

He feels a little sorry for him. “Congrats on gold at Europeans,” he tells him, because he wants to let him know that, yes, he is still on his side, and besides, it’s not quite the same saying it over text. And they have texted. A lot. And it’s nice. But seeing in person how his smile spreads across his face, slowly at first, then rapidly brightening, beats emotionless typing. Neither of them are the type to use emojis or even be expressive in how they write, they discovered quickly. It stands in stark contrast to the real life Yuri, who can’t hide what he’s feeling no matter how hard he tries, even if he’s trying to mask it with loathing or anger. That didn’t need to be discovered. That much was plain from the start. The thought makes Otabek smile too, and that seems to hearten Yuri some by itself.

“Thanks.” He glances down at his skates, at the trails he’s scratched into the ice. They stand silent for a moment, before Cao whizzes past, whistling, and pulls them from their trance. “You gonna warm up so we can do a jump battle?” Yuri asks, with a sudden grin.

“After a taste of defeat so the real thing doesn’t taste so bitter?” Otabek replies.

Yuri knocks his elbow. “You wish.”

It’s true, though. Actually, if he were to show himself to his full strength, and assuming Yuri hasn’t got anything planned for himself either, he would actually win a hypothetical jump battle, since he has an extra, higher-difficulty quad. But he looks over the rink to Cao, who stumbles on the landing for his quad toe, and Nathan, who is glaring with envy at the fact he is managing at all. Obviously, he’s one of the skaters who hasn’t managed quads yet. “Maybe if we get the chance by ourselves,” he suggests instead, and nods his head subtly in their direction. Yuri opens his mouth to argue back, then realises what Otabek means. Then he seems to think it over, digests it, and protests anyway.

“It’s not like they won’t see us jump in competition anyway,” he complains. He has the sense to keep the volume down, at least.

“It’s different.” It is. Otabek remembers the first day of that summer camp with Yakov, remembers the hopelessness of watching everyone so far ahead of you, remembers the shame of being demoted to the lower division. What’s the point? They’d only remind Cao of what he’s going to have to leave behind soon, and Nathan of just how tough his competition is.

Yuri fixes him with a long look, and nods quietly, launching back into another lap of the rink and a triple flip. When Otabek glances over, Yakov is staring in shock. Their eyes meet, and he jerks his head.  _ Get over here _ . Yakov may not be his coach anymore, may not be particularly keen on him, but even skaters who have never trained under him hold a deep respect for the man. Actually experiencing his coaching first hand just makes it worse. Otabek skates over obediently and gazes expectantly at him. 

“How did you get him to…” He gestured confusedly in Yuri’s general direction, propping himself up on the boards. “To stop being  _ Yuri _ ?”

“I asked him,” Otabek mumbles.

“You asked him,” Yakov breathes, disbelieving. “You  _ asked _ him.”

“Yes?” he splutters.

“ _ Asked _ . God, that boy is taken with you.” Yakov looks disturbed on some deep emotional level, as if he’s just been introduced to some terrifying philosophical thought, the kind that shakes your world. Otabek quirks an eyebrow, confused, but Yakov claps him on the shoulder, shaking his head. “At least he has a friend,” he sighs, despairing.

“Yeah,” Otabek supposes. His coach finally gets onto the ice and manages to flag him down, so he nods again to Yakov and makes his way over. “Coach.”

“Let’s run through your short program first, same as always,” he tells him, fixing him with a look to remind him:  _ no quad loops _ . It’d be better to practice with them, especially since they’ve already decided he’s going to give it a shot, but it’s a gamble. A big one. There’s a lot at stake but Otabek knows he won’t manage without it. Coach hands him his phone and headphones, music already prepped to play.  _ Samarkand Overture.  _ His grandfather is from Uzbekistan. He was named after him. There’s a reason he chose this song. He puts his earbuds in and gets into position, claiming the far end of the rink to Cao, who is concentrating hard on his routine, Nathan and Yuri milling about in the middle running through various individual elements. Then he presses play and begins to skate.

Of course, he sticks to the old triple salchow, triple toe combination, but in his mind he leans over onto the outside edge before he takes off, the fast flurry of music pounding in his ears, and throws himself into the extra rotation. Both in his head and reality, he lands neatly, before digging in his toe pick and throwing himself up into the toe loop.

As he glides out and back into the choreography, he hears Nathan whistle. 

Well. Maybe he’d like to show off just a little.

When the music finishes, he skates over to meet his coach, who nods approvingly. “Are you still set on…” he trails off, but they both know what he’s referring to.

“Yes.”

Coach nods, and hums. “You’re going to need to make sure you get the ice coverage still, I know you’re only on half a rink but keep your speed up. Otherwise…” He waves his hands through the air in some vague attempt to communicate what he actually means, then shrugs. “You’ll be fine.”

Otabek grins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i literally spent a solid half hour figuring out what brand of coffee otabek would be drinking at the airport so i could describe his cup (it'd either be costa (which i went with for familiarity) or a russian brand called shokoladnitsa) and if that isn't the most pathetic way to use my time idk what is.
> 
> nathan is the first and most self indulgent of a couple of ocs that will be notable later on as we progress (painfully slowly, apparently) through this fic. he fulfils the purpose of being a foil for yurio as a new skater who doesn't automatically Destroy Everyone with his talent and giving me a british skater bc we don't really have anyone notable in singles so getting a canon brit skater is a pipe dream. yes, i named him after nathan chen, and i considered changing it but then he landed his 5 quads and i took it as a sign. yes, conquest is a real last name (i stole it from a historian because it fits the winning/victory theme of yoi names).
> 
> cao bin isn't technically an oc but he might as well be. he'll be sort of relevant but he's due to retire so not for long. (poor cao bin.)


	6. Samarkand

The day of the short programme dawns bright and clear, Otabek rising from sleep with relative ease an hour earlier than he would otherwise. He’s managed a few private sessions on another rink to keep working his quad loop into his routine, much to his coach’s delight, and Yuri has been suspiciously well-behaved when he’s met him around others.

He pulls his phone from his pocket, scrolling through his contacts to find “ _ Юрий _ ”. He taps his name, swaps onto his cyrillic keyboard and starts typing: “ _ Давай _ ” .

The first few groups are much of a muchness. A Polish skater flubs half his jumps, but manages to eke enough points from the program component score to net himself a place in the free skate. A young South Korean just transitioning to seniors with a poor reputation for edge violations on his jumps manages to land a clean triple flip without turning it into a lutz, to his visible delight. He gets so excited he almost slips on the step sequence afterwards.

Nathan looks no more confident when he starts than he’d seemed at the impromptu group training session early the other morning. He’s skating with long, languid movements to the  _ Labyrinth _ soundtrack, and Otabek vaguely remembers him talking in a fit of patriotism about using just British musicians next year because he loves skating to Bowie so much, but both his expression and the choreography are missing something. There’s potential there, though. His edges are excellent, and his jumps are clean (albeit limited to triples).

He forgets about the text until he’s stood beside the rink after he’s warmed up (wincing as the Lithuanian who is first in his group falls on his triple axel) and feels his phone vibrate in his pocket. Confused, he takes it out and swipes to open the message. It’s a picture. Yuri, the collar of his  _ Agape  _ costume visible beneath his Team Russia jacket, the sides of his hair braided back, giving a thumbs up. He’s changed his hairstyle for it again. “Sorry I couldn’t tell you in person.”

There’s a warm glow in his chest as he hears the announcer say his name, puts his phone away again into his jacket pocket and passes it over to his coach. “Who was it?” he asks.

“Yuri,” Otabek replies, a little fond.

Coach smiles, almost knowingly, which is not the sort of cryptic thing he needs to see right before skating. He quirks an eyebrow at him, and he shrugs. “Good luck, Beka. You’ll be great.”

He nods, and skates out. The stadium erupts into cheers, which he wouldn’t have expected last year, but this time he’s hot off the back of winning fourth place at the Grand Prix final. At the centre of the ice, he draws a deep breath and waits for the music to begin. With the swell of the first note, the rest of the world disappears.

Samarkand, when Otabek was twelve, his grandfather holding Anara and Inzhu’s hands as he lead them around the Registan, beneath the towering arches and across the vast courtyard. The girls had been fascinated, staring up in wonder at the structures around them, and Otabek had hung back, watching the three of them. It had been a swelteringly hot day, especially since Almaty had been in a cold spell when they’d left the day before, and he felt uncomfortably warm, pressing a frozen bottle of water to his brow. It wasn’t that he wasn’t having fun, but there was a tension hanging in the dry air. “Beka!” his grandfather had called, smiling gently. “Come over here!”

And he’d showed him the patterns in the mosaics that climbed the walls, and the excitement came sweeping back in between blissfully cool gulps of water. The music suits it, suits the grandeur, communicates the epic scales of the buildings. It’s a tribute.

He slows down into a mohawk turn, crossing his left leg in front of his right, pulling his right arm back and bracing himself before launching into the air off his right foot, loose strands of hair whipping across his forehead. He almost lands it clean, but he steps out a little on the landing, cursing himself. But it’s still relatively minor in the face of the points he’ll pull in with it.

“Quadruple loop!” the announcer cries, shocked. A wave of murmurs washes over the audience as he digs his toe pick into the ice to jump the triple toe. That’s fairly clean too. “Amazing! Altin has never performed a quad loop in competition before, and is one of the few to do so, and in combination with a triple toe too!”

Otabek feels his chest glow warm with pride, moving into a step sequence and feeling the music thrum in his chest. Each impact of his blades on the ice lands in time with the heavy beat, and although Otabek will never be match Yuuri Katsuki for his PCS scores, maybe today will be a fluke, because it all feels right as it comes together and he lets his body flow. He can feel that he’s lost some of his usual stiffness. He finishes out with a spin, and even though his legs protest, he manages to pull his leg a little higher and straighter than normal, manages to push himself a little further. He is not flexible. He  _ is _ , however, determined. The same unbendable attitude that keeps his body strong but not limber forces it under his will now.

The music rumbles to a close, the final note echoing through the stadium. Otabek could happily fall to his knees and die of exhaustion right there, but the screaming of the audience sustains him long enough to wave and skate back to the sidelines and his waiting coach.

When he first started training with him back in Russia, Coach had been warm from the off. “No, no, don't call me something as formal as _ Renat _ , just call me Coach!” he’d told him when they'd first been introduced. He was younger than a lot of coaches, forty-four, a former pair skater before his partner and wife was in a catastrophic car accident which severed her spinal cord. She was paralysed from the waist down, and killed herself within the year. Coach was devastated, and vowed never to compete without her, throwing himself into retirement and coaching aged only 26. It was tragic, but it meant (especially for those far from home like Otabek had been) that as he aged, he'd developed a tendency to treat his students as if they were his own sons. The pride on his face now proves it, and before Otabek can process it he's being pulled into a fierce hug. “Beka, I'm so proud of you, damn it!”

Otabek pats his coach on the back and pulls away to smile at him. “Your spins and step sequences were so fluid as well,” he praises, passing him his skate guards. Otabek slips them on, as Coach keeps rambling. “You may never be a Yuuri Katsuki or Stéphane Lambiel, that's not your style, really, but you weren't stiff like you usually are, and that  _ jump _ !”

He claps him on the back and steers him towards the Kiss and Cry, where Otabek sits down almost in a daze. He's back to being mechanical, every scrap of exertion drained from him. He feels a teddy bear being pressed into his arms and squeezes tight, as they wait for his score. “Score for Otabek Altin,” the announcer calls, thankfully in English. “115.52!”

Otabek breathes out, disbelieving and relieved. “That’s a personal best for Mr Altin, and ranks as one of the highest all-time scores for the short program!”

He’s rushed off to be interviewed, where he gives his usual short, polite answers, until he manages to escape to the stands to watch the remainder of the competition.

Cao Bin is next, skating to Frank Sinatra. He’s never paid a huge amount of attention to him, but even though the largest jump he manages is a quad toe loop, he owns the music, swinging his whole body with the irregular melodies. He spins, Sinatra croons why the lady is a tramp, and even if it’s not his best from a technical standpoint, there’s artistry there, and Otabek finds himself impressed regardless. It’s a real shame about his injury, he thinks, a little wistful.

Yuuri Katsuki comes dangerously close to his score, less than a point below, and maybe Chris wasn’t  _ completely  _ wrong about him liking men a little more than he might have thought, because even if Otabek managed to ignore Yuuri’s performance in the past, he certainly can’t today. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat and attributes it to the sheer sensuality of his performance, the drawn-out teasing that seems to get the whole arena hot and bothered. It’s only gotten worse since the Grand Prix Final, where his mistake made the whole program stiff and a little stilted. Now he’s got a better grasp on that quad flip and loosened up, and it’s a force to be reckoned with. Viktor did a good job coaching him. It’s almost a shame that’ll be the last performance of it, but it’s certainly the best yet.

Michele Crispino’s performance is fairly typical of his usual standard, but even at Europeans he’d seemed a little weaker than he used to be with the program. Maybe he needs a new direction for next season, he muses, watching Emil Nekola clap him on the shoulder with a beaming grin as he starts his own short program. Christophe Giacometti catches Otabek’s eye before he starts skating, and winks. Otabek stares back deliberate and impassive, and Christophe launches into his routine faking offence, still oozing sex appeal to the point where it becomes a little stifling.

Nathan finds Otabek during the lull between groups, as the Zambonis begin slowly chugging their way across the ice, with a strange look of determination on his face. “Otabek Altin,” he says. Then stops, eyes growing wide. “Uh. That sounded stupid. Just Otabek.  _ Fuck _ . Uh. Right, can we be friends, maybe? Or something?”

Otabek wonders exactly what he’d done to bring this on, but nods, slowly.

“Oh! Great, fantastic. I, uh… Thanks. For the other day. Having my back.”

“I…”  _ I didn’t really _ , he thinks, before he realises that he... sort of did. He’s caught up in his thoughts for a moment, and doesn’t notice Nathan standing up until he coughs to clear his throat.

“Sorry, I’ll let you be for now,” Nathan mumbles, sheepish. “But could I get your Whatsapp or something? Instagram? I don’t know, I just appreciated that you weren’t trying to be pushy and stuck up for me. You seem like a nice guy.”

“I don’t really use social media,” Otabek tells him. “You can have my phone number?” he suggests instead. The kid seems nice enough, if awkward.

“That works too! That’s great!” They swap numbers, and manage to catch the back end of Guang Hong’s program before Nathan runs back to his coach. It feels  _ weird _ . Otabek isn’t the type to make friends easily, yet here he is, doing just that.

Coach comes out of nowhere to sit beside him, patting his back. “I’m glad to see you socialising,” Coach says. It should sound patronising, but it’s him. Otabek half-smiles, half-shrugs. “No, really, it’ll be good for you. You’re too isolated sometimes, Beka.”

“You’re probably right,” he admits, sheepish. But the thought of  _ friends _ reminds him to recall the order, and he realises suddenly that Yuri will be in the next group. “I need to go and wish Yuri luck,” he announces, suddenly, and Coach beams.

“Alright. I’ll save your seat.”

Otabek rushes down from the stands to the backstage area where the last group is waiting for the ice to be cleaned, peering through the crowds to find the white smear of Yuri’s costume against the rest. He’s already taken his jacket off, stretching his arms behind his back, and Otabek manages to catch his attention. Yuri pushes past the other skaters (a disgruntled Phichit Chulanont, an amused JJ Leroy, a Japanese kid with hair dyed blond and a red streak in his fringe almost as bright as the gold sequins on his waistcoat). “Otabek!”

“Yuri.  Давай .”

With a smirk, Yuri gives him a thumbs up. “Hope you’re ready to taste defeat, Altin,” he quips.

JJ snorts from behind him, and they both turn to face him. “I hope  _ both _ of you are.” His fiancée,  _ Isabella, _ Otabek vaguely remembers, slots an arm round his waist and shakes her head with a smile.

Yuri growls, feline. “Fuck off, JJ.”

The reaction only seems to please him, smug grin growing. “I'm not going to let you get to me this time. Either of you.” He gives Otabek a long, significant glance, and Otabek understands.

“If you score better than me, I’ll wipe your debt from the Grand Prix Final,” Otabek announces.

JJ squints, confused. “Debt?”

Isabella whistles, double checking to make sure his parents aren’t listening in. “I wondered why he still had all his cash on him when you brought him back from the bar.” A look of newfound respect and gratitude dawns on her face.

“Brought me… back? Bar?” He narrows his eyes, racking his brains, then gapes. “Wait,  _ you _ brought me back when I got drunk?”

“Yes. And paid your tab.” Otabek would have tried this earlier if he knew how fun teasing JJ would be. Yuri looks as though he can’t decide between being horrified that his friend helped his arch-rival or impressed at the effect the revelation of it is having on him.

JJ gulps. “Oh,” he mumbles, the noise strangled. “What if you win?”

Otabek shrugs. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “You pay me back plus a bottle of vodka. A full size one.”

Sighing with visible relief, JJ grins. “Deal.” They shake on it. Phichit and the young Japanese skater both look intrigued, watching from the sidelines.

“Hmm? What’s a deal?” asks a familiar voice from behind him. They all turn to see Viktor standing, hands in his pockets, grinning, Yuuri stood by his side, along with a harried-looking Guang-Hong Ji and an impassive Seung-Gil Lee.

“None of your business, old man,” Yuri sniffs.

Viktor pats his head. “We came to wish you luck, Yurio!”

“That’s not my name!”

“And Phichit and Minami-kun!” Yuuri chimes cheerfully, waving to his friend. Phichi beams back at him and salutes. The Japanese skater shrieks, and stumbles, blushing, over to Yuuri. They (that is, mostly the boy apparently called Minami) launch into a stream of fast-paced Japanese while Yuri and Viktor harass each other. JJ nudges Otabek’s arm, suddenly sober.

“Otabek?” he whispers.

Otabek frowns. “Yes?”

“Does everyone hate me?” His eyes are fixed on all the conversations happening around him, while he only has Isabella, pretending she isn’t listening as she hangs off his arm.

With an exhale that lands somewhere between a sigh and a groan, Otabek shakes his head. “No. Nobody  _ hates  _ you. You’re just annoying.”

JJ startles. “Annoying?”

Otabek swallows the first words that come to mind, and hums, thinking over what to say. “You have an ego,” he reminds him. JJ doesn’t dispute it. “It might help if you toned it down.”

Isabella rubs JJ’s arm comfortingly. “I keep telling him that,” she chides him. Otabek scratches the back of his neck. He hates being put into situations like this, where he’s one step away from putting his foot in his mouth. He wonders if he already has, because JJ looks crestfallen.

“Do I really seem like that much of an asshole?” he mumbles.

_ Kind of _ , Otabek wants to say. He shrugs instead. “So do I, sometimes,” he admits.

JJ laughs, a little uneasy, then loops an arm around Otabek’s shoulders. “Let’s be assholes together then.”

For a moment, Otabek is confused, before he realises he’s probably made another friend. “Good luck, JJ,” he says, filing this newfound knowledge somewhere in the back of his mind. He really isn’t all that bad underneath the self-important bluster. Maybe, where Otabek takes too long to think of what to say, JJ just doesn’t take long enough.

It seems like he got it right this time though, because JJ lights up. “Get ready to lose your bet!” 

Well. Nobody changes overnight. Otabek shrugs again, making his way back over to Yuri, who gives him a funny look.

“Why are you wishing JJ luck?” he snaps.

Otabek frowns. “Nobody else did.”

Yuri scoffs. Viktor tuts, poking under his ribcage. He yelps, squirming. Does that mean he’s ticklish? “Be nice, Yurio!”

“Fuck off!” he groans, wrapping his arms round his stomach in self-defence. “I’m skating in a minute, you moron!”

Yuuri manages to escape Minami and shakes his head indulgently at Viktor. “Vitya, leave him alone. Good luck, Yurio!”

_ Vitya?  _ That’s new. Not quite as intimate a name as Otabek would expect, but then the Japanese aren’t know for public displays of affection. 

Yuri stubbornly ignores everything except the nickname and snarls. “That’s  _ not my name _ !”

“They’re only trying to be supportive,  _ Yurio _ ,” Otabek says, offhand.

Yuri’s expression when he turns to gawk at him is steeped in deep betrayal. “Not you too!”

Otabek’s lips twitch upwards. “Sorry,” he replies, stifling a chuckle. Yuri kicks his shin, albeit without the force behind it for it to actually hurt.

And an announcement rings through the rink, telling them to get onto the ice to warm up. “Give JJ hell,” Otabek tells him.

“Oh, I plan to,” Yuri replies, almost predatory.

JJ waves on his way past, and once they’ve all made their way onto the ice, Otabek climbs back up to his coach, Viktor and Yuuri close behind. They sit a couple of rows down, Yuuri adjusting his glasses and leaning his head on Viktor’s shoulder. Viktor holds his hand, bringing it up to kiss the ring on his finger.

It’s sweet. A little nauseating. He ignores them to watch the last six zoom across the ice. Phichit practices a quad toe, JJ a quad salchow. Yuri quietly skates laps around the edge of the rink, before leaping into a flawless triple axel. The silver sequins wrapping around his legs reflect the lights, brilliant, as he lifts one into the air for a flying sit spin. There isn’t one in his program, but he tries a Biellmann anyway. Otabek could only dream of pulling that off, and the thought is a little intimidating, how inflexible he is compared to the skaters who kept up with that ballet. He remembers watching a video once, of the man sat only a few feet down from him, Yuuri Katsuki when he was still in juniors, practicing in a ballet studio with some world famous ballerina he probably should have heard of. His balance had been perfect, his legs stretched out to look far longer than they really were. Otabek has no interest in ballet. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t appreciate the artform.

Eventually, all of them except Phichit leave the ice. He stands tall and delivers his best performance of his short program yet, not showing any of the strain he must be feeling. Even when he wobbles on the quad toe landing, he seems to laugh it off, grinning and swinging his hips into the step sequence. It’s tenacity to be admired. When he finishes skating, the last time he’ll ever get the chance to do this program, he bursts into tears, clutching the embroidered, rhinestoned fabric at his chest, laughing convulsively. He punches both fists into the air and makes his way over to Celestino, who pulls him into a tight hug. Yuuri stands up, pulling out of Viktor’s arms to yell across the stadium. “Phichit! Well done!” Otabek doesn’t think he heard, but he finds the gesture sweet.

Next is Minami, whose costume he vaguely recognises as familiar but cannot place. He’s full of youth and vigour, without the stiffness or reluctance to commit to the movement that younger skaters can be prone to, and Otabek creeps down to ask Yuuri how old he is.

“Seventeen!” he chirps.

Otabek stares down at the tiny slip of a boy with something like mild horror. “I thought he was younger.”

Viktor laughs, running his fingers through the hairs on the back of Yuuri’s neck. “Japanese men tend to look younger,” he reminds him, but the teasing tone is intended for Yuuri, who chuckles and elbows him in the ribs.

“Shut up!”

“Oh, what will people think of us when I look like an old man and you still look youthful as a daisy?” he laments, throwing his head back.

Otabek slides into a seat a couple away from the two of them, not bothering to climb back up but reluctant to be too near them either, and tries to tune them out. Minami finishes, a decent score but nothing phenomenal, he’ll probably come in at about tenth.

JJ manages not to mess anything up this time around. Yuuri and Viktor laugh as they sing along to his music, half-joking, and half because it really is kind of catchy. He slots comfortably into first place, beating Otabek by a whole point, but that’s far from unbeatable. Otabek doesn’t see Yuuri clench his fists with determination so much as he senses it.

Seung Gil’s short program is weird. Otabek has never really followed his skating much, but the bright colours of his costume and the flamboyance of his music doesn’t suit what he knows of him: that he’s intelligent and almost clinical in how he analyses his own performance. It’s strange to see him trying something that’s meant to be so emotionally driven, and in his opinion it doesn’t quite work. His score is fine, but the whole thing seems off. Competition or no, Otabek sort of hopes he goes for something more his style next season.

Yuri is last. At Europeans, although he won, he didn’t come anywhere near scraping the same score as he did at the Grand Prix Final. Otabek worries his lower lip as the first notes ring through the rink.

And Yuri is ethereal as ever. Untouchable. The dark patterns across his torso blur into glittery silver as he spins, black skating boots dark streaks across the white ice. It isn’t quite  _ agape _ , not the way it was back in late November, when the feathers on his shoulders looked like an angel’s wings, and he could have flown off the ice. Instead, he looks more focused, grounded. He doesn’t soar into his jumps, but they’re beautiful nonetheless. His spins are gorgeous. Otabek can’t catch his breath.

He comes first, of course, and Otabek runs to the kiss and cry to greet him afterwards. Yakov sighs, irritated at the sight of him, but nudges Yuri in his direction anyway. “Told you I’d come first.”

“You were right. Sorry.” He shrugs, nonchalant. “For now.”

He wonders, hopeful, if this is how they’ll always be, challenging each other, pushing to do better, when a dark shape rushes past him to wrap Yuri in a hug. “Yurio! You were great!” Yuuri gushes. “Good work!”

“Get off me, pig!” Yuri huffs, struggling to worm out of the embrace when Viktor darts around the other side to hug him as well.

Otabek can’t help it. He chuckles privately, hiding it behind his hand as Yuri finally escapes.

“But we’re so proud of you, Yurio!” Viktor whines, ruffling his hair. It pulls the loose strands beneath the braids through into a messy nest on top of his head.

“My hair! Asshole!” Yuri slaps his arm away and then folds his in front of his chest, pouting. Yuuri and Viktor, like a pair of irritating, overly-affectionate, embarrassing parents, cackle.

“Vitya! Katsuki!” Yakov yells, and the two freeze. “If you want me to take you on next season you’d better stop messing about with my best skater.”

Yuuri seems to relax once he processes that he’s not really scolding them, just telling them to lay off. “Sorry, Yakov-sensei.”

“Sensei?” Yuri pipes up, trying to flatten his hair with the palm of his hand. Viktor really did a number on it.

“Uh. Coach Yakov?” Yuuri tries instead.

Yakov lets out a long-suffering groan. “Call me whatever you like, Katsuki. It’s not like if Viktor has anything to do with it I’ll be rid of you any time soon. Might as well make yourself comfortable.”

Yuuri frowns and pauses, thinking it over, but Viktor leaps forward to sling an arm around Yakov. “Yakov! I knew you’d pull through for us! You shouldn’t be too formal with my Yuuri though, or he’ll never relax!” He shoots him a significant look, and Otabek begins to feel like an unwanted intruder until Yuri stands beside him to watch too.

Yakov hesitates, and looks to Yuuri for some kind of guidance. “Can I call you Yuura?” he asks.

Yuuri looks surprised. “Uh. Okay.”

“Alright,” Yakov grunts. “Yuura. Just call me Yakov. I’ll help Viktor coach you, if you want. He’s never going to keep up with both coaching you and training himself, so I can probably take some of the work, if you’re alright with it and he foots the bill.”

“Anything for my Yuuri!” Viktor sings.

Yuuri hesitates again, but then nods. “Alright. I’ll do it.”

“Good.” Yakov actually smiles, and reaches out a hand to shake Yuuri’s. “Then it’s settled. Might as well since you’ll be skating on my rink anyway.”

Yuri groans. “Just what we need, another insane asshole on the rink. Why can’t you coach Otabek instead or something?”

Otabek starts, unsure what to say. He’s happy with his coach, they suit each other. He’s learned when to push him and when to let him keep to himself, and he wouldn’t throw that away. Luckily, Yakov seems to catch on to how he’s rejected the idea. “Don’t be stupid, Yurochka. He’s finally skating back in Almaty. He won’t want to leave.”

They make eye contact, and Otabek only hopes his expression can convey how grateful he is for diffusing the situation.

Yuri casts a glance in his direction, then storms off. Well.

“Watch out he doesn’t get too attached to you before he drags you to St Petersburg personally,” Yakov warns him. But it seems as the awkwardness between them after his summer camp has begun to ebb away. Otabek nods, waves to Yuuri and Viktor as they rush after him to discuss the terms of their coaching contracts, and gets a pat on the shoulder from Baranovskaya, strangely silent when she follows.

Otabek scratches his head and goes to find his own coach. He could do with a nap.


	7. Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've had a busy few weeks, so this is really late, but it's also a couple thousand words longer than usual and stuff actually happens. i should be back to posting normally in a couple of weeks, but until then i have an otabek cosplay for a local con that needs finishing. (unbetaed because i didn't want to bother him with slow progress or the monster this became.)

There is a full day between the short program and the free skate, and Otabek is desperate to go riding. In the absence of a bike, he finds himself asking his coach if he knows how he can get in touch with JJ.

“JJ?” Coach asks, surprised. His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline, then furrow. “Why JJ and not Yuri?”

Otabek shrugs. “JJ’s not all that bad, really. We could do with being nicer to him.”

After a hard look, Coach shrugs and sighs. “You’re not wrong there, Beka.” The fact that he calls him Beka instead of his full name shows he approves, at least. It’s a strange formality he sticks to with Otabek, probably because he has such a strong tendency towards reticence.

Coach rifles through his paperwork to try and find something, and finds JJ’s mother’s phone number. Without Otabek having to ask, he dials it and asks for JJ’s, which he scrawls on a piece of hotel stationery and passes wordlessly over. “Thank you,” Otabek says, quietly, and programs it into his phone to call him.

It rings twice before he picks up. “JJ speaking.” He sounds surprisingly calm.

“Hello. It’s Otabek,” he replies.

“Eh?  _ Otabek _ ? How did you get my number?” There’s a creak on the other side of the line, the rustling of fabric, like he’s shifting in a bed.

“My coach rang your mother.”

JJ hesitates. “Renat Evgenievich Morozov?” The name is sounded out, not a natural recollection, but nor is it wrong. He sounds curious and confused.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, right.” His voice brightens. “What’s up, pal?”

_ Pal _ . That’s weird. “Do you want to get a drink tonight?” He remembers, suddenly, the last time they were at a bar together and stumbles to try and clarify. “One drink. Maybe two. Not a repeat of Barcelona.”

JJ snorts. “You say that as if I remember what happened. I’ll go so long as you don’t mind Isabella tagging along. She’ll have my hide otherwise.”

“Uh. Sure.” He doesn’t have any issue with that.

“Isn’t Mila here? You were getting cosy at the banquet, bring her too. Make it a double date.”

Otabek’s hands feel suddenly clammy. “I don’t know…” he replies, trying for neutral.

“She’ll say yes if you ask her!”

“She doesn’t like you,” he reminds him. “If you hadn’t noticed.”

“Oh.” Maybe he hadn’t. “Doesn’t matter. It’s  _ you  _ asking her.”

“Maybe nice time.”

JJ groans. “Aww, okay then, man. Where and what time?”

Otabek hesitates. It’s not exactly something he’s  _ used to _ . “I don’t know the area or anything. Hotel bar might be easiest.”

He snorts. “Fuck that. I did some googling earlier, let’s try somewhere more exciting.”

“We’re skating tomorrow.”

“The first exciting thing we’re going to be doing is pulling that stick out of your ass, Otabek. God, there’s gotta be some sort of nickname I can call you,  _ Otabek _ is a mouthful.”

A moment of silence. “People tend to call me Beka,” he tells him.

“ _ Beka _ ? That sounds like a girl’s name. Can I call you Beks or something instead?”

It’s not what he’s used to, but he has no problem with it either. “Sure.”

“Nice one, Beks. Meet me in the lobby at eight, I’ll get us there. It’ll be fun, man.”

He hangs up. Okay. Coach looks at him, expectantly. “He wants to go out somewhere at eight.”

Coach raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure that’s going to be okay?”

Otabek shrugs. “His fiancée is coming. She seems sensible.”

“You’re sensible. Stay that way.” It’s well meant. It’s fair.

For now, he goes for a walk to find a coffee shop. It doesn’t take long for him to realise his mistake: it’s absolutely freezing. The streets are paved with snow rather than stone, and he has to lift his feet higher than usual to trudge through it as it starts to turn to slush. Otabek has mastered the ice for a living - but he isn’t wearing his skates right now. This kind of ice is treacherous, more so than any triple axel. Perhaps it’s safer that he didn’t rent a bike after all.

He finds a quiet café after ten minutes, and although it doesn’t look the best, with its dingy décor and squeaking hinges on the door as he enters, it’s a place to buy espresso and sit away from the hotel, which is better than nothing, and certainly better than staying out in the cold. After ordering, he glances around again, and quickly makes eye contact with Sara, sitting with her hands clasped around a large mug topped with whipped cream. She beams, waving him over. He grabs his coffee and slides into the seat across from her accordingly.

“Otabek! Nice to see you! I watched the Four Continents livestream, you were amazing!” she gushes, leaning across the table.

Sara is very pretty, he thinks, with her long, silky dark hair and huge chocolate brown eyes. But she’s so upbeat, he doesn’t think he could ever keep up with her. “Thank you,” he replies. “You did very well at Europeans.” She’d come second to Mila, he remembers, as was pretty much expected.

She flutters her eyelashes at him. That’s unexpected. “Not as well as Mila. What did you make of her?” That’s even  _ more  _ unexpected.

“Uh. She was great,” he tries, frowning uncomfortably. What is she playing at? Sara sips her drink through the cream. He wonders what it is she has, but if their encounter at the coffee shop during the Grand Prix Final was any indication, it’s probably full of sugar and sweetness, enough that just the thought of it would curl his lip if he wasn’t trying not to appear rude.

“I know, right!” Sara squeals, regardless. “What did you think of her triple axel?”

He actually had been impressed - she’d pulled it off with unusual ease for a female skater, and he appreciates that sort of strength. Whenever he’s watching pairs and they manage a quad throw, he finds himself awed. “It was great.”

“ _ Just  _ great? Again?” Sara pouts. “You aren’t great at flattering a woman.”

“But she isn’t here?” The statements turns into a question in his confusion.

“She can be if I tell her you are,” Sara replies, smirking as she sips her drink again.

“Why?” Otabek splutters.

“I’m sure you can guess.”

“Why is everyone asking me about Mila today?” he asks. He’s raising his voice a little, not a shout, but loud enough that the old couple in the corner turn their heads to glare disapprovingly.

Sara looks at him with disbelief, then shakes her head. “If everyone’s talking about you two, isn’t that as good a sign as any? You should ask her out.” She takes the spoon from the side of her plate and scoops a little of the whipped cream up to her mouth, humming. “Even if you aren’t that interested in her yet, she’s one of my best friends, I love her, and you can take it from me that she’s a riot. You’ll have fun!”

“I have plans tonight,” Otabek protests.

“Oh?” Sara sits up suddenly, alert. “With who? What are you doing?” She bounces in her seat, anxious for gossip.

Otabek groans, knowing there’s probably no way out of telling her now she’s latched onto it. “Drinking with JJ and his fiancée,” he admits.

“ _ JJ _ ? After he  _ stole your bronze _ ?” Sara looks almost disgusted. “Why are you going on a night out with that asshole?”

“He’s not that bad,” he insists. “And he didn’t steal my bronze. It’s his. He earned it.”

Sara huffs, taking a larger scoop of cream. “Bullshit. He fucked up his short program  _ and  _ his free skate. You skated clean. He was overscored.”

“I’m not going to be a sore loser. The judges made their decision.”

“Katsuki was penalised  _ way  _ too hard for that quad flip in his short, too,” Sara continues, getting into the swing of her rant. “You don’t drop ten points from touching down, especially since he got the rotations in. Maybe he wasn’t quite as fluid as he usually was, but that’s like saying  _ Viktor Nikiforov landed that jump funny  _ and pretending it negates him jumping a quad Lutz or something.  _ And  _ Plisetsky was overscored. That program wasn’t worth almost 119 points.”

Otabek feels a surge of anger and snaps. “Sara. Stop.”

She clamps her mouth shut and folds her arms across her chest. “I’m just saying, the judges at the Grand Prix Final were shit.”

“What’s done is done. It’s been months. Let it go.”

“Why aren’t you mad, Otabek? It affects your rankings. You missed a medal because they don’t know how to do their jobs right.”

“JJ’s jumps had higher base values. Katsuki dropped PCS points. Yuri gained them,” he bites back. “They won their places on the podium fair and square.”

She sighs, and stirs the remainders of her cream into the drink. It dissolves down into small white lumps. She smushes them up against the side of her mug with the back of her spoon, then lifts the cup to drink it. “Whatever you say,” she finally replies. Then she arches an eyebrow. “You should still ask Mila out with you tonight. Even more reason to, actually, so you’ll have someone else to talk to once you remember how irritating maple syrup boy is.”

“Noted,” Otabek grunts, and sips his espresso.

Sara wrinkles her nose. “How can you  _ drink  _ that?”

“Acquired taste,” he says. “How do your teeth not rot?” Maybe it’s a little severe, but he tries not to come across that way.

“Special treat! I’m only allowed them at competitions!” she chimes, licking the spoon happily.

Otabek grimaces. “What have you even got?”

“Amaretto mocha,” she replies.

“Isn’t that a liquor?” He remembers a girl buying him a coke with it in once at a club. It was so sweet that the film from the sugar coating his teeth made him feel sick.

“Non-alcoholic flavouring in the syrup, dumbass,” she explains, teasing. 

“So you have amaretto, chocolate, milk  _ and _ sugar ruining your coffee?” He tries not to sound too serious. Joking around has always been difficult for him. Sara grins and seems to understand him.

“Yep!” She takes a large gulp to prove her point. Otabek can’t help but smile into his own drink. At least she’s friendly.

“Do you have Mila’s number?” he asks.

Sara lights up, nodding frantically and searching through her bag for her phone. She copies the number down on a napkin in a scribble and presents it to him proudly. “Mine on the top, hers on the bottom. You're a good guy, Otabek. Even if you're a pushover.”

He frowns. “Thank you?” He thinks it’s something like a compliment.

She drinks the last of her mocha and stretches, getting to her feet. “Have a nice date!” she calls as she makes her way outside. 

“Wait!” he yells after her. She pauses, apparently confused.

“What’s the matter?”

Otabek drains the last of his coffee and tosses the empty cardboard cup in the bin as he passes it. “Let me walk you back. It’s slippery.”

Sara’s eyes widen and she lets out an excited gasp. “Otabek! You’re such a gentleman! Mila is a lucky girl!” Her voice is singsong, delighted. Otabek shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot. 

“I just don’t want you to fall,” he insists. 

“I was thinking of going somewhere else for a while first mayeb.” As if to prove her point, she shivers. Her coat isn’t heavy, just a light mac over a cashmere jumper, and she doesn’t have a scarf or gloves. No wonder she looks freezing.

“It’s too cold. You can get a proper coat and a taxi from the hotel.” It’s uncomfortable, the thought of leaving someone alone like this. He’d feel like an ass.

She hums, and nods. “Alright then! Let’s go.” She rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, humming to herself contentedly. 

He starts off in the direction of the hotel, both of them walking in comfortable silence. She almost slips once, near the end of the road, and flushes when he catches her arm to steady her. She tries to laugh it off, but looks embarrassed. “Careful. You’re skating later,” Otabek reminds her. She looks horrified for a moment, then nods.

They get back to the hotel, and the moment they step through the doors, Michele is on them like a shot. If Otabek didn’t know better, he’d say he was moments away from starting foaming at the mouth. “Sara! Where have you been? Why are you alone with this guy?” he splutters, words spewing out of his mouth so fast they sound like they’re chasing one another. He barely has time to take a breath between sentences.

Sara looks unimpressed. “Bro, I went for a coffee. Otabek wanted to make sure I stayed safe and walked me back.”

Michele turns his attention to Otabek, eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to make a move on my sister, asshole?”

Sara snorts. “He’s not. He’s asking Mila out later.”

Otabek startles, panicking. “Please don’t tell everyone,” he mumbles.

“Aww, why not? You two will be cute!” Sara enthuses. “Anyway, he isn’t interested in little old me, and even if he were, it’s none of your business anyway, Mickey.” Otabek isn’t so sure of that. She’s an attractive woman. If she weren’t so obviously trying to push him onto Mila for whatever reason, 

Michele growls at him once more, then mutters something to Sara in Italian. They start arguing, Sara seeming to grow more annoyed by the minute, and Otabek decides quickly that it’ll be better for them all if he gets out of there. “Good luck in your free skate,” he mutters, then makes a break for the lift so he can get back to his room.

“See you, Otabek!” Sara calls from behind him, and he waves in her general direction, relieved when the doors slide shut in front of him.

Within a couple of minutes, he’s sitting on his bed, staring at the scrap of paper Sara gave him. Almost mechanically, he programs the two numbers into his phone, then takes a deep breath and reluctantly dials Mila’s number. After a moment, she picks up. “Hello?” she asks. “Who is this?”

Otabek clears his throat. “Otabek Altin. Is this Mila?”

Mila lets out a muffled squeak on the other end of the line. “Yes! How did you get my number?” Her voice sounds brighter already.  _ Oh _ . Maybe all the others were right, after all.

“I met Sara earlier,” he says, even as the gears in his brain start to whirl.

“Oh right! Well, how can I help you?”

Otabek takes a long pause. He hasn’t spoken with Mila enough to say if he has any interest in her yet, and the last thing he wants is to lead her on. But he’s already made the decision to call her, and there’s nothing wrong with seeing how a date goes. The words fall out of his mouth, even if something feels off about it. “Would you like to go out for drinks this evening with JJ, his fiancée and I?” It all comes out in a rush, but now there’s no taking it back.

“Yes! Absolutely!” She, on the other hand, doesn’t hesitate. “What time?”

“Meet in the hotel lobby at eight,” he tells her. “That’s long enough after you’ve skated, right?” He knows the medal ceremonies can drag on sometimes, but usually not  _ too  _ long. How long it’ll take her to get ready, on the other hand - well, he has no idea. He’s seen his sisters spend hours getting ready to go out to a movie or the park (and thanks Allah that they aren’t old enough to go clubbing yet).

Luckily, Mila seems to have no qualms about time. “Yeah, that’s fine. It’ll be fun! Thank you!” she says.

“See you.” He hangs up, and sighs heavily, falling back on his bed.

After a lunch from room service and a few hours, he drags himself out of his room to find his coach. “The ladies’ free is soon,” he says, when he answers the door.

Coach stares at him. “Uh. Did you even want to go to that?” he asks, furrowing his eyebrows. “Thought you were just gonna practice today.”

Otabek doesn’t reply, just gives him a hard look until Coach finally turns around and gets his things ready to leave. “You’d better get up early for morning practice tomorrow, Beka.”

“Yes, Coach.”

It takes longer than it should have to reach the stadium in the snow, so they miss the first three groups, but are in good time to watch the second half. Sara spots him when she’s warming up, and skates over to Mila to pat her on the shoulder and point. They wave to him, and he returns the gesture, albeit awkwardly. 

Sara’s signature jump combination is executed flawlessly. Mila lands her triple axel like it’s nothing and wins gold. When he meets them both afterwards, it’s with a congratulatory smile. 

“You came!” Sara yells, delighted, clapping her hands together excitedly. Mila is upbeat, beaming, but she looks up at him through lowered lashes, almost shy.  _ Oh no _ .

“What did you think?” she asks, holding her breath for an answer.

“You were both great,” he says, but it comes out neutral. Mila purses her lips, not dissatisfied but not best pleased either. It may not be overwhelming praise, but it’s true.

“I’m looking forward to later,” she replies instead, tucking a curled strand of red hair behind her ear. Her hair was short enough that she didn’t need to tie it up when she skated. It makes her skating feel freer than that of those who are pinned up and proper, like Sara always is. For every inch that Sara is the very picture of the archetypal ice princess, Mila subverts it with her dyed hair and rock music. It’s interesting to compare them.

“Me too,” Otabek says. And no, it isn’t a lie. Maybe a white one. His reasons are different. But he is determined to stay honest. If she asks him, he decides that’s what he’ll tell her, and that’s how he’ll stay: honest. Mila grins up at him regardless.

“Great!”

Sara loops an arm around Mila’s shoulder and winks. “Have fun, you two! See you at the banquet, I need to find my brother before he self-destructs.” She waves as she walks away, to a Michele who looks far more on edge than he ought to. Emil Nekola stands besides him, chattering away, happily oblivious. He looks in their direction as Sara approaches, and notices him and Mila behind her, giving them a bright smile and a wave. Otabek makes a promise to speak to him more. If he’s going to make an effort to be more social, Emil seems like a decent guy. He vaguely remembers hearing he has some interesting hobbies.

As it stands, he’s alone with Mila. Stuck for something to say in the meantime, he decides to head back. “See you later,” he grunts.

“See you, Beka!” He keeps forgetting that she decided to call him that. It throws him every time.

Later, he is waiting in the lobby in the nicest t-shirt he thought to bring and black skinny jeans. The snow has melted now, the pavements dry enough that each step isn’t accompanied by the very real risk of slipping and breaking your neck, so that’s a relief, because the dark is setting in early now. The cold hasn’t dissipated yet, though - he feels it seeping through his shirt whenever the door opens, and is glad he thought to take the armour out of his bike jacket and bring it along. He arrived early, which is fine. There’s time yet for them all to arrive. What he doesn’t expect is a familiar voice from behind him at quarter to.

“Otabek. Who are you waiting for?” Yuri asks, and words escape him. 

“I’m just going out,” he says, trying to dodge the question, not that he thinks it’ll work.

“ _ Eh _ ? With  _ who _ ?” Yuri blurts out, eyebrows knitting together in surprise. “Can I come?”

Otabek fingers the hem of his t-shirt and frowns. “Sorry. We’re going to be drinking.”

“You’re  _ what _ ?” Yuri cries, grabbing his shoulder and turning him around. Otabek is too surprised by the sudden contact to resist. “You know we have the fucking free skate tomorrow? Are you a moron?”

“Just a couple of beers.”

Yuri studies his face, the creases he can feel forming on his forehead, the nervousness he knows is lingering in his expression. “Who are you going with?” His voice is uncharacteristically level, cautious, warning.

“Mila. A couple others.”

“That old hag? Who are the couple others?” If Yuri sounds aghast that he’s going out with his roommate, he dreads the reaction to hearing his friend is going to be drinking with his arch-rival.

“JJ and his fiancée.”

_ “Who?!” _ Yuri yells, and the entire lobby turns to stare at them. There’s a particularly disapproving glare from the woman behind the check-in desk. “What would possess you to go out with  _ them _ ? He’s an  _ ass _ ! He stole your medal!”

Otabek is extremely glad that Russian is less widely spoken than English. At the very least, there’s less chance of them being overheard and understood by a stray ISU official. “He didn’t. And Yuri, he’s not  _ all _ bad. I want to get to know him.”

Yuri looks like he wants to growl at him, like an angry cat up on its haunches, but releases his arm and huffs instead. “Didn’t peg you for the kind of traitor who would get all buddy-buddy with my arch-rival.”

Otabek stares at him, the way he sounds like a petulant child. If he didn’t know Yuri enough to know that it wouldn’t help, he’d tell him as much. Instead, he keeps his mouth shut. “You’re still more important.”

“Go out with me instead then! I’m stuck tagging behind Viktor and Katsudon. They’re  _ disgusting _ ,” Yuri complains, sticking his tongue out as if he’s trying not to vomit.

“I can’t just cancel my plans,” he protests.

“Why not?”

“It’s rude.”

“It's  _ JJ _ !”

“And?”

Yuri groans.

“Look, we can go somewhere tomorrow,” Otabek tries to compromise.

Yuri looks up at him, doubtful. “Promise?”

“Yeah.”

They pause, seeming to have come to some accord, before Yuri scowls again. “Why are you going with  _ Mila _ ?” he asks, bitterly.

“It's sort of a date,” Otabek supposes.

Yuri’s face drops, as it Otabek has just slapped him across it, then morphs into something hurt and angry. Otabek doesn't understand. “So you're dumping practice and rest and preparation for the fucking  _ World Championships _ for a  _ chick _ ?” he screams. The woman behind the desk yells something unintelligible from behind the desk.

“I'm just seeing if we get along,” he replies, staring. He never would have guessed that Yuri might have this kind of response, so violently opposed to something so small. 

Yuri scoffs. “Whatever.”

They are awkwardly silent for a moment, until Otabek decides to pipe up. He hasn’t waited five years to meet him again to stand by and watch him drop their (still relatively young) friendship because he’s going on a date. “I’m sorry if you disapprove. I promise, we’ll do something tomorrow.”

Although his shoulders drop, he glances up at him through the sheet of golden-blond hair falling across his face. His eyes are such a bright blue-green colour, and it’s the same expression as the one he wore all those years ago. Otabek feels like a child again: too stiff and uncertain to understand what to do, frozen in admiration of a soldier’s gaze. He wonders what Yuri is fighting for now. “Okay,” Yuri agrees, uncharacteristically quiet. Otabek’s brow furrows. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Dinner, before the banquet?” Otabek asks.

“Sounds good.” He is too sombre, as he slinks away to the lifts. Their eye contact holds until the doors close in front of him.

Not a minute later, JJ and Isabella strut out of the other side, beaming. He has his arm around her, red t-shirt cut close to his body, holding a black bomber jacket with white print slung over his shoulder. She looks good too, in a low-cut strappy top which matches the colour of his and tight black jeans. “Hey! Beks!” he calls, spotting him immediately. Otabek raises a hand in acknowledgement. They saunter over, grinning. “Thanks for inviting us out, man. Is Mila coming?”

“She should be here soon,” he says. Sure enough, she dashes out from the entrance to the stairway, red hair bobbing around her head. It’s curled more neatly than usual, he notices, and she’s wearing dark eye shadow and a tight-fitting dress that hugs her curves. Mila is attractive. He’s always  _ known  _ that, but he doesn’t usually pay much attention. It feels lecherous to eye up his fellow athletes somehow, and he’s never been the type to actively seek out relationships. He wonders though, letting his eyes skim up and down her body, if maybe he ought to start figuring out what exactly he likes,  _ who  _ exactly he likes. He remembers Yuuri’s  _ Eros _ performance for some reason. Huh.

But before he can get too bogged down in a sudden crisis of sexuality, Mila is there, and even though she’s tossing her hair and looking at him through her eyelashes, she’s still nothing but bubbly and friendly. This might just work out, Otabek thinks. “You look nice,” he tells her, because it’s what he’s supposed to say, and it’s true.

She giggles, clutching the glittery gold purse she’s holding in front of her. “Thank you!” she chimes, happily. 

“Almost as beautiful as my Bella,” JJ cuts in, squeezing his fiancée’s shoulder. Mila’s face falls from happy and lightly flirtatious to irritated.

“Both of us look great, JJ, don’t be an ass,” Isabella says, laughing and smacking his arm playfully. Her eyes meet with Otabek’s for a long moment, and he hopes he’s got the right of their silent conversation.  _ I’ll keep him in line. _

“You do!” JJ agrees, ignorant of his faux pas. “The taxi should be waiting outside, let’s go!” He marches cheerfully towards the revolving doors leading outside, and Otabek offers Mila an arm.

She blushes prettily and takes it. “What a gentleman.”

Sara had called him that earlier as well. “Not really,” he tries to protest, but she smacks his arm the same way Isabella had.

“Shut up! There aren’t enough guys who care about the little things anymore,” she insists.

“If you say so.” He shrugs. He isn’t going to argue it, and she seems happy to hear it.

They follow JJ and Isabella out to the car, and JJ tells the driver where they’re going. Otabek, of course, doesn’t recognise the name. “It’s a kind of high-end sports bar,” he explains. “Not too fancy, but hopefully quiet and not full of trash either.”

Mila still looks almost suspicious of him, but doesn’t speak up to say anything. Isabella, of course, quietly agrees with him. Otabek has no protests. “Sounds good,” he says, just to break the silence.

“The reviews said they had good beer, at least!” JJ proclaims.

“Remember, nobody’s drinking too much tonight. You’re competing tomorrow,” Isabella warns him.

“I know!”

Mila relaxes a little. “Are you ready for your free skate tomorrow?” she asks Otabek quietly in Russian, leaning in. He can smell her perfume.

“Yeah.”

“Are you putting a quad loop in?” Her eyes are bright and eager. Otabek nods, careful. She lights up, clapping her hands together.

“You were so cool doing it in your short program yesterday! I can’t wait to see it!” she gushes, still quiet. But JJ still notices.

“What’s that?” he asks, but it isn’t interrogative or malicious. It’s just pure curiosity.

“Nothing!” Mila says, dismissive.

“Talking about tomorrow,” Otabek explains, when he sees the flash of hurt cross JJ’s face at Mila’s rejection.

“Oh! I’m looking forward to grinding you into the dust, Beks!” JJ gloats, laughing heartily.

It was rude when Viktor and Yuuri were announcing their engagement in the restaurant back in Barcelona, but this sort of pre-competition banter is what Otabek is used to. It’s the language that he and Yuri speak to each other, even while their words are Russian. He smirks, raising an eyebrow. “Keep telling yourself that,” he counters. Mila whistles, and the whole car smiles, tension dissolving.

The journey to the bar is only short, and they arrive quickly. JJ passes the fare to the driver, with a hefty tip, and holds the door for Isabella while Otabek helps Mila out. He winks at him over the top of the car, nodding to Mila. Otabek frowns. Mila is wearing low heels, not too high, but she catches one of them on the edge of the pavement and stumbles, falling into his arms. It seems so convenient that he’d think it was deliberate, but her surprise is genuine. “Thank you!”

“No problem,” Otabek replies, quietly. 

JJ winks at him. Otabek wishes he’d stop doing that.

Two by two, they file inside. The bar is warm and bright and clean, even if it looks as though the drinks are pricy. It’s empty enough that they find space around a table easily. “Okay boys, you’re buying!” Isabella says. 

“Anything for you, darling,” JJ agrees, almost simpering. Mila catches Otabek’s eye and pretends to gag. He’s a little surprised that she actually agreed to come out, really - every minute seems to make her intense dislike of JJ more obvious. At least she’s better at hiding it than JJ is at hiding his ego.

“What would you like?” Otabek asks Mila, and to her credit it seems as if she wasn’t expecting him to play along.

“Uh. Double vodka Redbull.” Her voice tends upwards towards the end, as if it’s a question rather than a statement. Otabek nods.

JJ throws an arm over Otabek’s shoulder and starts walking him over to the bar before he can say anything more. “Nice one bringing her after all, Beks.” The way he praises him reminds him of his coach after he presented him with a gold medal at the NHK trophy. He’s practically  _ glowing _ .

“Thanks?” Otabek mumbles confusedly in response.

The bartender gives them a long look when they approach. “ID?” he asks in a heavy Finnish accent, wiping a glass.

JJ chuckles loudly, pulling out his driving license. “But you could always just check my Wikipedia article,” he brags. 

Otabek is glad he thought to bring his motorcycle license. With far less fanfare, he shows the bartender, who nods to him and glares at JJ. “Are you some of those figure skaters, then?”

“Only the King of the Ice and the Hero of Kazakhstan!” JJ announces, clapping Otabek on the shoulder. Otabek grimaces. The bartender looks skeptical. 

“Well, what can I get you?” he prompts.

“Two litres of beer for me.” JJ leans on the bar, probably intending to appear suave or impressive.

“A litre of beer and a double vodka Red Bull, please,” Otabek says politely. 

The bartender sighs, still eyeing JJ. “One moment.”

They pay and take their drinks back to the table, where surprisingly Isabella and Mila have somehow begun a fast-paced, enthusiastic conversation about music, from the sound of it.

“I was a fan of JJ’s music before his skating,” Isabella explains, waving her hands excitedly. “I used to go to every one of his gigs, back when his band was still really small. I started loving skating through him, but music was my first love.”

“I understand. My last boyfriend took me to a Muse concert on our first date. I think that was half the reason I thought I liked him so much.” Mila barks out a laugh, throwing her head back, curls bouncing.

“That’s awesome! Aren’t you skating to Muse?” Isabella asks, squinting a little like she’s trying to remember.

“Yeah!” Mila looks flattered by her remembering. “My coach, Yakov, decided to let me take a slightly different direction. Said he thought the whole ‘ice princess’ act is good for the judges but doesn’t suit me, and I’d do better if I mixed it up and put my own spin on my performances. Oh, hi!” She finally notices that they’ve returned, and Otabek hands her her glass. She sips on the straw, humming contentedly. “Thank you, Beka.”

“Seriously? You  _ actually  _ get called Beka?” JJ groans. “What next? Becky? It makes you sound like a little blonde valley girl.”

“It’s  _ Russian _ . It’s different to English,” Mila complains, through gritted teeth. Her glare looks like it could burn a hole in steel. 

JJ’s expression freezes: a lopsided half-smirk and wide eyes, like he’s a five year old who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Eh?”

Mila lets out a groan of frustration. “It’s not girly in Russia. Or Kazakhstan. Piss off.”

“Hey. Don’t be so hard on him,” Isabella interrupts, before Mila can truly get started.

“It’s fine,” Otabek insists. With a huff, Mila folds her arms and slumps back against the chair. Isabella frowns and takes a sip of her beer. 

“Sorry?” JJ tries, but the word comes out more confused and harassed than sincere.

“It’s not a problem,” Otabek says, trying whatever he can to make the awkward atmosphere dissipate.

“So! What do you guys do outside of skating?” Isabella pipes up, trying to make light-hearted conversation. Otabek’s appreciation for her as an ally increases tenfold.

“Running. Sometimes I play hockey, I’m pretty good at it, but skating is more artistic. I like it more. I’m into sports, I guess.” Mila shrugs.

“Work on my bike. I work as a DJ sometimes,” Otabek admits. Three pairs of shocked eyes turn on him.

“A  _ DJ _ ?” Mila gasps.

“Dude,  _ where _ ? That’s awesome!” JJ sounds more impressed than he should.

“I have a small following because of skating.” That’s not quite true - he’s pretty popular back home. You aren’t given the moniker  _ The Hero of Kazakhstan _ without some substance behind it. But he doesn’t like to think on that. “Clubs in Almaty let me in underage to play sets,” Otabek explains, slowly. “I like playing alternative places since they let me play metal, but normal clubs are fun too.” It’s probably the most he’s said in one go to anyone here, and it shows: they are all gaping at him, open mouthed.

“Dude.  _ Dude. _ You should play some of my songs next time!” JJ suggests. Otabek gives a non-committal hum.

“What kind of metal do you listen to?” Mila asks, instead. She looks fascinated.

“Uh. Bit of everything.” Otabek scratches the short hairs on the nape of his neck, uncomfortable. 

Luckily, Isabella and Mila at least seem to catch the hint, and start to steer the conversation back to something that doesn’t throw a spotlight on him, and Otabek actually starts to have fun. He figures out fairly quickly that in public, when there are too many people to see, Isabella would rather be supportive of JJ, even if he’s being an ass. But more privately, like this, she’ll casually, carefully correct his behaviour. And he listens, because he really isn’t bad. Within an hour, he’s even getting along with  _ Mila _ . But by the time they’ve had their second beers, Isabella claps her hands together and reminds them that they need an early night, ringing a taxi and shepherding them all away from the bar (and the barkeeper whose opinion of JJ doesn’t seem to have improved) towards the door.

“This was fun,” Mila says, almost shyly.

“Yeah,” Otabek agrees.

“What would you say to going for dinner tomorrow, before the banquet? When you can properly relax?” she suggests, fluttering her eyelashes. And Yuri’s face flashes across Otabek’s mind. He winces.

“I’m sorry, I made plans.”

“Oh.” She looks a little annoyed, maybe a little hurt. “Who with?"

“Yuri,” Otabek tells her, wondering why everyone has issues with him going out with other people today.

“Oh!” She laughs. “I was worried for a second. You seemed to be getting along with Sara, and for a moment I was worried you were trying to lead me on. I’m sorry, I should have trusted you more.”

_ Oh _ . “No. Just Yuri,” he reassures her. He promised himself that he would be honest, but for some reason his words, although true, feel like they ring false.

They step outside, and the soft orange light from the streetlamps is flattering on her. It’s chilly enough that she shivers, and Otabek slides off his jacket to offer her. She accepts it, draping it over her shoulders and folding her arms inside it. Otabek isn’t huge, but he’s broader than most skaters, and although Mila may be strong, she’s still small. The jacket is huge on her, but it’s endearing. “ _ Спасибо _ ,” she whispers.

“No problem.”

JJ throws him another obnoxious wink. Otabek thinks they’ll be good friends, once they’ve gotten used to each other. That doesn’t quell the desire to wring his neck sometimes now. (He’s happy to see Isabella give him a subtle prod in the side.) 

The taxi comes, and the journey back is quieter than getting there. They bid JJ and Isabella good night, and Otabek offers to walk Mila back up to her room.

“Beka, I really had fun. Even with JJ there. Thank you,” she tells him, earnest. 

“Me too.”

“Even if it’s not tomorrow, can we do something again? I know distance will be an issue, but…” She trails off, digging her toe into the carpet.

“Sure,” Otabek replies.

Mila tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles. “Great. See you tomorrow. I’ll make sure to watch you beat the shit out of JJ.”

“Of course.”

“Good night.” She passes his jacket back to him and slips into her room, closing the door quietly.

When he wakes up the next morning, he spots it slung over back of the chair and thinks that, just maybe, he might be onto a good thing.


End file.
